Longer cooling, lower temperature no improvement for infant oxygen deprivation

NIH | JANUARY 3, 2015

The standard treatment for newborns whose brains were deprived of oxygen appears to work better than proposed alternatives, according to a new study.

The standard treatment involves lowering an infant ’s body temperature by about 6 degrees Fahrenheit for 72 hours. Attempts to improve on this treatment by further lowering body temperature or increasing the duration of cooling were of no additional benefit.

Oxygen deprivation — before, during, and just after birth may result from a number of causes, including compression of the umbilical cord, loss of blood from a tear in the placenta or a tear in the womb. Oxygen deprivation in newborns, is also known as neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).

A previous study found that lowering an infant’s body temperature after oxygen deprivation could reduce the risk of death or disability. Survivors may develop long-term disabilities, such as intellectual impairment or cerebral palsy.

Infants assessed as having HIE were randomly assigned to one of four treatments:

• Lowering body temperature to 92.3 degrees for 3 days (the standard treatment)
• 92.3 degrees for five days
• 89.6 degrees for three days
• 89.6 degrees for five days

Although the differences in survival rates between the groups were not great enough to be statistically significant, infants receiving the standard treatment had a slightly higher survival rate than did the infants in the other groups.

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