Untreated Jaundice leads to brain damage, deafness in babies

Chandigarh, Aug 18 (UNI) Medical experts today warned that jaundice, if left untreated in newborn child, could become severe and cause deafness and permanent damage to brain.

About six per cent of all hospital born babies required treatment for jaundice, and ten per cent of these required a complete blood exchange as part of treatment, stressed paediatricians participating in a two-day workshop on Jaundice in newborn, organised by Newborn Unit of PGIMER here today.

Once the brain starts getting damaged due to severe jaundice, the baby first becomes lethargic, feeds poorly and emits a shrill cry.

Later, it arches the neck and back backwards and becomes stiff, the eyes stare downwards persistently and the baby slips into coma, Dr Saurabh Dutta from PGI said.

Measuring the electrical activity of the nerves involved in hearing and doing an MRI scan were ways to identify brain damage early, they said.

Dr Siddharth Ramji from Maulana Azad Medical College threw light on the unique difficulties faced by newborn babies while handling the yellow pigment, Bilirubin.

He said the foetus is protected from jaundice in the mother's womb because the mother's blood circulation washes away Bilirubin.

After birth, the baby has the twin handicap of an immature liver and being cut-off from the mother. As many as 60 per cent of term babies and 80 per cent of pre-term babies develop some degree of jaundice.

Dr Ashok Deorari from AIIMS, Delhi, told the delegates how to approach the problem of newborn jaundice in the first week of life.

He said if a newborn baby was discharged within the first couple of days, a pre-discharge blood test for jaundice must be done to predict the condition of which babies, which is likely to worsen.

Dr Deorari also spoke about phototherapy as a means to treat newborn jaundice. Phototherapy consists of placing such newborns under special lights.

Dr Vineet Bhandari from Yale University Medical School, US, spoke about newer methods of treating jaundice.

The delegates broke up into three groups and participated in group discussions moderated by the workshop's faculty. Case histories of patients who had suffered from severe jaundice were discussed. The delegates made clinical judgments based on the laboratory information provided.

UNI