Funding outcome

Damage to the newborn infant brain remains one of the most devastating lifelong handicaps. The outcome is typically described as cerebral palsy, the incidence not decreasing in the last 20 - 30 years. It results in devastating motor difficulties, with many children requiring wheelchairs life long, but also severe intellectual and behaviour problems. It is now recognized that the number of children with autism and attention deficit disorder is far greater in those who also have cerebral palsy, than in the general population. The cost to society is approximately 1.2 million dollars per child, for medical needs alone. The emotional cost to families in divorce and loss of income, cannot be measured. Recent years has seen that cooling babies immediately after birth for a few days, and by just a few degrees, has been very beneficial. In newborns who have moderate injury, it reduces the amount of the disability in some of these infants. While this is the greatest advancement in the care of the newborn brain, and clearly shows the most promise, it is not perfect. Cooling does not help the most severely injured babies, and does not completely protect those babies who have moderate injury. The focus in therapy has therefore been to add a supplemental medication along with hypothermia, to improve this most promising approach. The brain requires the restoring of energy after an injury in order to recover. The purpose of this study is to better understand how hypothermia affects the recovery of energy, and when during the cycle of damage this occurs. By doing so, we can properly time the supplementation of hypothermia so that a commbined and improved benefit is seen.