Keeping Cool: UAB adds mobile infant cooling technology to save babies brains

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - Normally doctors and parents do everything they can to keep newborn babies warm. But when it comes to a birth brain injury, keeping cool, can be key.

Doctors have found that lowering a newborns body temperature after loss of oxygen can save their developing brain from damage.

“When babies are born and they have lack of oxygen either right before birth, during birth, or right after birth, it can cause neurological problems and can even cause permanent damage. Research shows that if you cool a baby it can decrease swelling in their brain and some of the permanent neurological damage they may have otherwise,” explains Darlene Watts. She’s a Neonatal nurse practitioner with UAB’s critical care transport.

Now, UAB is one the first hospitals in Alabama, and in the southeast, to offer a mobile Therapeutic Hypothermia Treatment for babies.

Several hospitals in the Birmingham area offer the therapy, but the units are large, heavy, and expensive. Getting newborns to the hospital in time, can be difficult.

“The issues with this cooling, is that you want to start it within a 4-6 hour window. That’s when they get the most benefit. So what we were realizing with the flights or long drives is that the babies weren’t getting back here within that window of time,” says Watts.

For a newborn in a hospital that’s hundreds of miles away, that can be almost impossible.

“Once they have some type of neurological hit like hypoxia, and they have symptoms and the doctor identifies this baby is going to have some kind of neurological damage, they will contact UAB and set up a transport,” explains Watts.

But that process, takes precious time. Once the critical care transport team gets on site and gets the baby back to the hospital, it can be hours.

“That’s why our neonatologist set out and said ‘let’s see if we can find a portable system that works because if we get there we can get within that 4-6 hour window and not wait until we get back to UAB and have access to that big system,’” says Watts.

The new state of the art equipment weighs less than 30 pounds, and fits into the back of an ambulance, or the critical care jet to reach patients more than 150 miles away.

“No other transport units in state or the surrounding area that have this capability. Now this is taking that callability to every patient in surrounding area and states,” explains Watts.

Now 10 neonatal nurse practitioners are trained and ready 24-7 to respond with the mobile unit, but it only takes a team of 2 to actually run it. It’s been in operation since January, and since then Watts says that at least three babies live’s have been changed forever.

“Before, once a baby had one of these incidents in labor or right before labor, you can treat them with drugs, but you couldn’t do anything about their long term outcome. Now I have seen babies that you’ve thought this poor baby will have no quality of life, and do the cooling and the family brings them back in 3 months and their facial expressions and cooing and meeting their milestones and you’re like ‘I cannot believe this baby came back from what it came back from,’ Watts says with emotion.

“I have been taking care of babies for 23 years and this job is a very exciting job. You get to see the latest and greatest and you feel like you really get to make a difference in people’s lives.”

The same technology works for adults too, in fact UAB has a bigger unit that is used to treat some stroke patients.

“it’s wonderful because I feel like UAB is willing to pay money and do research and be proactive to get the latest highly technological equipment to provide things for their patients,” says Watts.

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