Delivery room intervention: Improving the outcome

Abstract

The authors have conducted video review of neonatal resuscitations since 1999. Over this 10-year period 3 phases of our experience have been recognized. Our early reviews helped us recognize what we were doing in the delivery room, an area that had been ignored in improved intervention. It was noted that on many occasions multiple people were trying to accomplish the same task, that bag and mask ventilation was almost exclusively the purview of the respiratory therapists and was not performed well by others, and that infants with low birth weight were often hypothermic on admission. After determining what was being done and how well it was being done, we moved on to how to do it better. This period included making environmental changes by warming the room, the use of occlusive wrap, determining the effectiveness of bag and mask ventilation with colorimetric CO2 detectors, and the introduction of crew resource management to develop consistent and effective communication. The third and current phase of our experience is to determine how these interventions affect delivery room and potentially later outcomes. Well-designed clinical trials are still needed to further establish the most optimal resuscitation interventions. © 2010.