Evaluation and prognosis of neonates with asphyxia treated by hypothermia

Asphyxia is a perinatal incident of high mortality rate. Therapeutic hypothermia in both the head and the whole body has been proposed as an effective method in this regard. In this study, we compared these methods in neonates with asphyxia. In this study, 16 neonates with asphyxia in two hospitals including Alzahra Hospital (head hypothermia) and Taleghani Hospital (whole body hypothermia) underwent therapeutic hypothermia for 72 hours. Temperature was maintained precisely controlled by several sensors. Moreover, body cooling was performed on the trunk and limbs of the neonates. The temperature and vital signs were controlled every hour while biochemistry and coagulation tests were performed regularly. Furthermore, the early and late complications of the patients, including developmental disorders, were closely evaluated. The two groups were compared using Chi-square and Mann Whitney U Test via SPSS software V.16 and the P value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. In total, 16 cases with the gestational age of 38±2 weeks were enrolled in this study. Of the 9 cases of head cooling, one expired and 2 others experienced mild developmental disorders. Of the 7 neonates of whole body cooling trail, 3 expired, one experienced minor developmental disorders and one case showed major signs of developmental disorders. No significant differences were found in terms of the feeding time (head group 5±2, body group 8±5 days) and the discharge time (head group 15±8, body group 14±5 days) of the studied neonates. The head hypothermia method seems to be associated with a lower mortality compared to the whole body method. However, the difference was not statistically significant in the sample size above. Therefore, performing such procedures on larger samples could confirm the findings of this study.