Placing VLBW infants in polyethylene plastic bags during transport reduces the occurrence of hypothermia, especially moderate hypothermia.

No abstract

Newborn infants, especially those in the neonatal intensive care unit, tend to go through a transition period in early life including complex perfusion changes. Haemodynamic monitoring allows for early detection of diseases, thus improving outcomes and can be life-saving. A reliable modality of hemodynamic monitoring requires early, direct, non-invasive and continuous detection of irreversible damage caused by insufficient tissue perfusion and oxygenation. PPI has been embedded in the latest generation of pulse oximeters, which obtain data via a sensor attached to infants' palm or sole and emit 940 nm near-infrared light. Different tissues and blood vessels absorb different amounts of light, with the amount of light absorbed by pulsatile tissues-dynamic changes of arterial blood flow, and non-pulsatile tissues-venous blood, muscle and other tissues, being detected. The amount of light absorbed by non-pulsatile tissue is constant. PPI is the percentage of the former to the latter. 1 It reflects the real-time change of peripheral blood flow and is an evaluation of pulse intensity at specific monitoring sites. 2 In the newborn population, GA has a great impact on physiology. The early postnatal PPI values of newborns at different GAs may also be different. 1 Therefore, the range and thresholds of PPI values for detecting diseases in newborns should be modified according to different GA. 1 In addition, studies which investigated PPI were previously conducted at sea level but lacked data from other altitudes. 3