What to do if your baby has jaundice

Babies with jaundice can recover through a period of light therapy, so parents need to calm down so that they can give their babies better care and treatment, and don't panic. For premature babies, if jaundice occurs, the situation is usually more serious. This is mainly because their resistance is low. Blood transfusion therapy can be used when necessary.

Light therapy

(1) Indications for phototherapy: Unconjugated bilirubinemia due to various reasons; treatment of premature infants should be active; indications for phototherapy should be relaxed for high-risk newborns; preventive phototherapy for extremely low birth weight infants.

(2) Side effects of phototherapy: fever, diarrhea, rash, bronze disease, DNA damage, and eyes.

3. Exchange blood therapy

(1) Indications for exchange transfusion:

1) Patients with a clear prenatal diagnosis of neonatal hemolytic disease have umbilical cord blood hemoglobin lower than 120g/L at birth, accompanied by edema, hepatomegaly, and heart failure.

2) Early neonatal serum bilirubin exceeds the exchange transfusion standard in the guidelines.

3) Those with early symptoms of bilirubin encephalopathy.

4) For premature infants and those with a history of stillbirth, generalized edema, severe anemia, etc. in the previous pregnancy, the blood transfusion standards may be lowered as appropriate.

Drug treatment

(1) Enzyme inducers.

(2) Block the enterohepatic circulation.

(3) Albumin.

(4) Intravenous immunoglobulin.

(5) Tin-protoporphyrin.

(5) Adrenal cortex hormone.

Imaging Diagnosis

(1) Ultrasound: Abdominal B-ultrasound.

(2) Radionuclide liver scan: biliary atresia.

(3) CT: biliary system diseases, fatty liver, and intrahepatic glycogen storage disease.

(4) MRCP (magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography): diseases of the biliary system.

5. Others

(1) Liver biopsy: rarely performed in the neonatal period.

(2) Measurement of carbon monoxide in exhaled breath: It can predict the rate of blood bilirubin production at an early stage.

(4) Electrophysiological examination of auditory and visual functions: brainstem auditory evoked potential and flash visual evoked potential, which are used to predict brain damage caused by bilirubin toxicity at an early stage.

1. Laboratory examination

Routine blood, urine and stool tests, biochemical tests, serum enzyme tests, etc.

(II) Auxiliary examination

1. Type B ultrasound examination: It is very helpful for determining the size and shape of the liver, the presence of space-occupying lesions in the liver, the size of the gallbladder and the presence of stones and dilatation in the bile duct, the enlargement of the spleen, and the presence of lesions in the pancreas.

2. X-ray examination: Abdominal plain film can reveal bile duct stones and pancreatic calcification. Cholangiography can detect bile duct stones and determine the gallbladder contraction function and whether the bile duct is dilated.

3. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP): The endoscope can be used to directly observe whether there are lesions in the ampulla and papilla area, and the site of extrahepatic or intrahepatic bile duct obstruction can be distinguished by angiography. It can also help to understand whether there are any lesions in the pancreas.