It’s a big moment, when someone — often dad — cuts a newborn’s umbilical cord.
But before you cut it, you clamp it to stop blood flow, and UT Health San Antonio is involved in a study that’s trying to determine whether when you clamp the cord matters in babies with congenital heart disease.
“So when a baby's born born and there's something called delayed umbilical cord clamping and there is a national study that they're working on that we're working on being a center for to see if the amount of time that you delay clamping the umbilical cord after baby's born can be related to the outcomes of the children born with heart disease,” said Dr. Ginnie Abarbanell, Chief of Pediatric Cardiology.
She added they’re hoping to figure out whether waiting before clamping the cord improves both surgical outcomes and neurodevelopment in babies with congenital heart disease. So they’re assessing babies after surgery…
“Then following up and doing neurodevelopmental testing in these babies as their toddlers and three and four year olds to see if there's going to be a significant difference,” Abarbanel said.
The NIH study will compare the outcomes of babies whose cords are clamped after two minutes versus those whose cords are clamped after 30 seconds.
If you’d like to learn more about the study, you can find contact information here.
CORD-CHD COLLABORATION by Texas Public Radio on Scribd
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, about how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.
