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American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for detecting neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia and preventing kernicterus

¹ Department of Neonatology, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
² Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva, Israel

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Kaplan
Department of Neonatology, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, PO Box 3235, Jerusalem 91031, Israel; kaplan@cc.huji.ac.il

Keywords: jaundice; hyperbilirubinaemia; bilirubin encephalopathy; kernicterus

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Although neonatal jaundice is usually a self limited condition, in exceptional circumstances, extreme hyperbilirubinaemia, with its devastating potential of irreversible brain damage due to bilirubin encephalopathy or kernicterus, may occur. For the most part, kernicterus should nowadays be a preventable condition; however, cases continue to occur. The reasons for the persistence of kernicterus are undoubtedly multifactorial. One factor may have been an opinion which evolved at the beginning of the 1990s that in some cases higher serum total bilirubin (STB) concentrations could be allowed than were previously acceptable. At about the same time a new phenomenon developed: that of earlier and earlier discharge of the mother-infant dyad. The potential consequences of discharge at or even earlier than 24 hours are that in many instances lactation may not yet be established, jaundice may often not have become manifest, to say nothing of reaching its peak, and associated illnesses may not . . . [Full text of this article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. M Kirk Neonatal jaundice: a critical review of the role and practice of bilirubin analysis Ann Clin Biochem, September 1, 2008; 45(5): 452 - 462. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]