Effective Passive Cooling During Neonatal Transport

We retrospectively evaluated the rectal temperature of 297 hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) outborn newborns who were passive-cooling transported by Neonatal Emergency Transport Service (Genoa and Rome, Italy) at their arrival in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. By a total of 1461 transports, 297 were for suspected HIE. Transferring suspected HIE newborn does not mean with certainty directing him/her to cooling treatment, but rather to monitoring and deepening in the hypothesis of starting hypothermia. This is the main reason why we have chosen 35 degrees C (+/- 0.5 degrees C) as the temperature target to be maintained during transport. Our study demonstrated that 263/297 patients (88.55%) passively cooled during transport were within the target limit of 35 degrees C (+/- 0.5 degrees C), whereas 15 newborns were at rectal temperature >35.5 degrees C (5.05%) and 19 were <34.5 degrees C (6.39%); no patients were <33 degrees C. In our opinion, these are satisfactory results. Overcooling, failed temperature target, and unstable temperature values are the main problems claimed to occur during passive cooling in transport. We would like to conclude underlining that a well-experienced neonatal transport team can use passive cooling expecting appropriate performances.