If the baby does not breathe at birth it will be less intelligent. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Southmead Hospital in Bristol (United Kingdom). In a study published in The Lancet, they affirm that these children will have a better chance of having less intelligence in childhood despite having been successfully resuscitated or having had proper health in the neonatal stage.
Normally if a baby does not show signs of breathing within ten seconds of being born, the revival, and this is especially serious in cases where it has been cut in the umbilical cord prematurely, thus depriving the baby of the supply of oxygenated blood from the mother, which is what they "breathed" in the womb. The lack of proper ventilation occurs in a small percentage of full-term babies and one third of premature babies.
If the baby suffers lack of oxygen By not ventilating correctly you can develop cerebral ischemia and a degeneration of brain tissue. This can lead to paralysis, intellectual disability and even death. However, most babies are resuscitated successfully and seemingly suffer no sequelae. However, it has now been discovered that their intelligence will possibly be less than that of children born without this problem.
The study of researchers from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Southmead Hospital in Bristol (United Kingdom) has been conclusive. They have studied almost 12,000 babies born in Bristol. Of them 58 had required medical assistance at birth and also during the neonatal period. 815 had been resuscitated successfully and without apparent sequelae, not needing special care. The others, more than 10,000, were born breathing without help.
They have performed various intelligence tests on these children, when they turned 8. The conclusion was that babies who received resuscitation but did not require further attention were 65% more likely to have a IQ less than 80 than those who had breathed without help.
His conclusion was that, although these babies usually have a lower weight in general or problems associated with pregnancy, it seems clear that having suffered hypoxia it determines a lower intellectual capacity in the medium term, although there has been no encephalopathy.
There are no data in the study of babies whose cord is not cut prematurely, which could certainly be of great interest.
Let a baby stay deprived of oxygen at birth, even a few seconds, it may not be fatal in most cases or leave no visible consequences, but if it affects a greater chance of having a much lower IQ than the normal average. And that clearly has consequences for the future life of these children.
