Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/0N-7vPlK5xM Over the past 4 years, delayed clamping and division of the umbilical cord of preterm babies has become an internationally-accepted guideline.  The delay permits a needed autotransfusion of the baby’s own iron-rich blood from the placenta preventing neonatal anemia and facilitating better myelin production and neurologic development. Now, neonatologists at the University of Rhode Island, one of the groups that championed clamping delay for premies, have published a study in the Journal of Pediatrics that demonstrates advantages of delayed cord clamping for term babies as well.  Their data on 65 term babies followed subsequently for 7 years demonstrates that waiting 5 minutes before clamping the cord while the baby enjoys an initial skin-to-skin encounter with mommy has tremendous value. They found that delayed clamping leads to a 30% increase in total blood volume and a 50% increase in iron rich red cell volume.  Those infants had a higher iron storage levels at 4 months