Newborns Jaundice And Cerebral Palsy. Part 2 of 3

The babies were delivered at one of 15 hospitals between 1995 and 2011. One batch of nearly 1900 newborns had bilirubin levels above the American Academy of Pediatrics’ threshold for exchange transfusion. Babies in this group were followed for an customary of seven years. A second group included more than 104000 newborns who were born at least 35 weeks’ gestation and had lower bilirubin levels. This group of infants was followed for six years.

The study, published on Jan 5, 2015 in JAMA Pediatrics, revealed three cases of kernicterus occurred surrounded by the babies with the highest bilirubin levels. However, the researchers eminent all three of these children had additional risk factors for brain damage. “We found that cerebral palsy consistent with kernicterus did not occur in a single infant with high bilirubin without the presence of additional jeopardize factors,” said the study’s second author, Dr Michael W Kuzniewicz, an assistant professor of neonatology in the department of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, in a university statement release.

So “This was the case even in infants with very high bilirubin,” said Kuzniewicz, who is also head of the perinatal research unit of the division of research at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. “Our writing-room was the first to evaluate how well the exchange transfusion guidelines predicted risk of cerebral palsy and kernicterus in babies with jaundice,” said the study’s principal investigator, Dr Thomas B Newman, with the departments of epidemiology and pediatrics at UC San Francisco.

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