According to this link, this little baby died of a heart attack and was brought back to life after 30 minutes of lifelessness. The story is miraculous in and of itself.
My question is this, why isn’t it standard procedure to perform full workups (EKG, oxygen tests, blood and the works) on newborn babies? Now, I don’t know if it already is procedure or not, but I just know that when my son was born, they did check him out, but never hooked him up to any machines. They just checked him with a standard stethoscope, some blood work and cleaned him up and he was bundled up and passed to his mom.
I’ve always wondered why they don’t do more thorough investigation of new little ones? Or do they? Help me fight my ignorance, please !
Because it would so very rarely help find something that needed immediate attention, and the number of ‘abnormal’ tests which were really not abnormal would be so high, that more infants would be damaged by the further testing needed to make sure that the original abnormal test was just a false positive.
Throw in the enormous expense, just to harm more infants than you help, and it adds up to a bad idea.
One must select screening tests very carefully. One wants a test which looks at a severe problem which has bad implications for future health, which consistently identifies the problem when it is present, doesn’t identify the problem when it is not present, and for which there is something that can be done to fix the problem.
The assumption is that newborns are in good condition, and this works out perfectly well for ninety-nine point some number of nines percent of all newborns. They’re delivered, start crying, pink up, and you can be pretty confident that they’re going to survive.
So, for that overwhelming majority, tests would be needless expense and bother, and would tie up resources (money, equipment and staff) that could be better used on people that are known to have problems. How many more lab techs would the hospital need to process routine screening blood tests on all newborns? How many more EKG machines would they need to buy? How many more technicians to operate them?
Besides, do you have any idea how difficult it would be to keep a baby still long enough to get a usable EKG?
One of mine was, as well. It was also a heck of a lot more expensive and traumatic than my son’s uneventful birth. The initial Critical Care charge is $1,931. The bed, nurses, diapers, intubation tubes, etc, for one day in the NICU was $1,109. The doctor’s fee for each day (didn’t matter if it was 5 minutes or 24 hours, or if they used the gear or not) was an additional $1,064. Lab fees varied, but on one single day (I think it was an x-ray, EKG, a cranial ultrasound and some more specialized bloodwork - pretty much what the OP is asking about, “the works” to look inside) came to over $20,000. And she was as healthy as a 23 week old micropreemie could be! Never a bleed or NEC or anything but respiratory distress.
Considering a normal, uneventful vaginal delivery costs $5-10,000 (add $2000 more for an uneventful, planned c-section), I don’t think most parents or insurance companies would be willing to assume triple that for the routine birth. If you’re especially worried and willing to pay, of course, you can probably bully your doctor into ordering them, but it’s probably not the best medical choice, for the reasons QtM outlines.
My youngest baby had an EKG done when he was one day old. He was 6 lbs 14 oz at birth (and probably slightly less the next day). The tech who did the test had never done it on a newborn and had some difficulty, but he managed it. Actually, it didn’t seem like he had ever even seen a newborn before…he was a little hesitant about handling the baby. My son had it done because I have lupus and there’s something (hormone? I think?) in me that could have caused his heart to lose it’s rhythm, so they tested him just as a precaution (they didn’t think the chances of him having a problem were very high).
Interestingly, he was born in Australia, where there’s socialized medicine. My oldest son, born in the U.S., did not have the EKG - it wasn’t even suggested. Both boys had fetal echocardiograms while they were still inside of me.
Actually, I’ve been in remission for quite a long time…15 years. I was very sick when I was diagnosed at 15 and was treated at Childrens’ Hospital in D.C. I was given pretty aggressive treatment and it took about 4-5 years to get it under control enough that I could come off medications. Luckily, I’ve remained in remission since then, although when bloodwork is done, it’s still evident that I have lupus. The only time I’ve had to worry about it is with my pregnancies (I have a clotting problem that occurs with lupus that necessitates the use of aspirin in order for the blood to successfully get to the fetus; without aspirin, miscarriage occurs). Plus, there are some other issues that require extra monitoring of the fetus and my health (one of which is the heart thing I mentioned above). Overall, though, pregnancy is usually good for women with lupus.
Sorry to run on. Thanks for asking…I hope your cousin is able to get it under some sort of control.