New studies show that inducing hypothermia, or cooling patients down with a cold blanket, eases damaging effects resulting from emergencies including oxygen loss. In particular, advanced neonatal intensive care units are using hypothermia to treat newborns experiencing restricted blood flow during delivery. According to the Los Angeles Times, restricted blood flow causes oxygen deprivation, and newborns who experience this oxygen deprivation may suffer brain damage and cerebral palsy. In a 2005 study, doctors cooled 102 infants and compared them to 106 babies kept warm after experiencing potential brain damage. Fifty-six percent of infants who were cooled survived with little or no disability compared to 38 percent of infants kept warm.

Amanda Reynolds gave birth to Avery in 2010, blue from a lack of oxygen. Doctors wrapped the infant in a cold blanket to induce hypothermia. She spent more than six weeks in the hospital, but now she is developmentally on track. Amanda expresses thankfulness for the therapy used on her daughter. Doctors still need large clinical trials for the treatment, but hypothermia is already accepted as a treatment at such places as the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Children’s Health Center where Avery was born.

This innovative technique sounds risky, but if inducing hypothermia can prevent further brain damage, more neonatal centers need to be trained and have access to this treatment.

Cappolino Dodd Krebs LLP–birth trauma lawyer