What to do if a newborn baby has jaundice

What should we do if a newborn baby has jaundice when he is one month old? Every baby is an angel given to us by God and the hope of every family. However, we often see a phenomenon that newborns have jaundice when they are just born. In fact, this is not a big problem, because it can be cured with active treatment, so expectant mothers and fathers don’t have to worry.

Medically, jaundice in newborns under one month old (within 28 days of birth) is called neonatal jaundice. Neonatal jaundice refers to a disease characterized by jaundice of the skin, mucous membranes and sclera due to abnormal bilirubin metabolism in the neonatal period, which causes increased bilirubin levels in the blood. This disease can be divided into physiological and pathological types. Physiological jaundice appears 2 to 3 days after birth, reaches its peak on the 4th to 6th day, and disappears on the 7th to 10th day. It lasts longer in premature infants and, except for mild loss of appetite, has no other clinical symptoms. If jaundice appears within 24 hours after birth, the daily serum bilirubin increases by more than 5 mg/dl or >0.5 mg/dl per hour; it lasts for a long time, >2 weeks in full-term infants and >4 weeks in premature infants, and it still does not subside, or even continues to deepen and worsen or reappears after subsiding, or jaundice begins to appear within one to several weeks after birth, it is pathological jaundice.

Physiological jaundice in newborns will disappear on its own. Some of it is breast milk jaundice, which will get better after weaning for a few days. However, if the symptoms do not subside after the child is one month old, you should go to the children's hospital and seek blue light treatment or medication. If you don't stop taking it, it will affect your child's liver function.

Blue light irradiation is a simple, effective and fast-acting method for treating neonatal jaundice. Jaundice means that the baby's bilirubin level is too high. Bilirubin can absorb light. Under the action of light and oxygen, the fat-soluble bilirubin is oxidized into a water-soluble product, which can be excreted from the body through bile or urine, thereby reducing the serum unconjugated bilirubin concentration. The absorption band of bilirubin is 400-500 nanometers, especially at the wavelength of 420-440 nanometers, where the photolysis effect is strongest, and the wavelength of blue light is exactly between 425-475 nanometers. The therapeutic principle of blue light therapy is to convert the bilirubin in the body into other substances through light irradiation, so that the bilirubin that continues to accumulate in the body can find another outlet, and the symptoms of jaundice can be improved.

Nowadays, blue light therapy is usually used to treat jaundice in newborns who are one month old. This is also a treatment method with relatively good therapeutic effects. Although we say that neonatal jaundice is a disease, parents do not need to worry too much. They should let their babies receive the most scientific treatment methods in time, such as the blue light therapy mentioned above, which is both safe and guaranteed.