Funding outcome

When newborn babies are born without a heartbeat the clinical team must provide breathing and chest compressions (what we call cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to the newborn baby. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is an infrequent event in newborn babies (~1% of all deliveries), approximately one million newborn babies die annually due to lack of oxygen at birth caused by being born without a heartbeat. Outcome studies of newborn babies receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the delivery room have reported high rates of death and neurological impairment. This puts a heavy burden on health resources since these infants require frequent hospital re-admission and long-term care. The poor prognosis raises questions as to whether we can improve cardiopulmonary resuscitation methods and specifically adapt them to newborn babies to improve outcomes. When we start chest compressions we use 100% oxygen as we believe this will help to restore a heart beat faster. Unfortunately, there has been no studies in humans or animal to examine if less than 100% oxygen is equally good during cardiopulmonary resuscitation in newborn infants. Our study is comparing 18% and 21% with 100% oxygen to demonstrate that 100% oxygen is not needed. If our animal study confirms our theory, we will perfrom a pilot trial in newborn infants, which will be followed by a large randomized controlled trial. Our approach could improve the lives of many babies in Canada and the rest of the world