The second half of the day consisted of visits to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CV ICU). Cardiology and neonatology are two specialties that interest me greatly as I have personally witnessed a coronary artery bypass surgery in the O.R., and I have also toured the NICU of Regional One and shadowed an OB/GYN. While in the NICU at Le Bonheur, the first patient we saw was a patient who was suffering from a brain bleed due to his premature birth, and he was intubated to help with breathing and also had multiple IV drips going.
After observing this baby boy, we headed over to another room, and I saw a baby that was born at 25 weeks gestation weighing only 900 grams. At Le Bonheur, the patients are weighed in kilograms (1 kilogram=2.2 pounds), so this patient weighed only a mere 1.98 pounds when he was born. This was one of the tiniest babies I had ever seen, and he was swaddled tightly in a blanket in his incubator. Naudia explained to me that the babies are placed in the incubator since the incubator acts as an environment similar to the womb (warmth, humidity, minimal sound), so that the babies can continue developing. Additionally, this baby has hydrocephalus, meaning that that there is excessive accumulation of fluid in the brain, and he was going back for a surgery to have a shunt placed to drain the fluid.
Once we were finished in the NICU, we headed down to the CVICU, and I saw a patient that had been placed on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) due to extensive heart conditions and problems. While I was down there reviewing patient charts with Naudia, the infant's stats dropped and doctors and nurses had to efficiently work to stabilize the patient. I do not think I have ever seen so many cords and wires attached to a small child, and it was mind-blowing to see the ECMO machine working in action. Moreover, ECMO is a treatment that uses a pump to circulate blood through an artificial lung back into the bloodstream of a very ill baby.
After observing this baby boy, we headed over to another room, and I saw a baby that was born at 25 weeks gestation weighing only 900 grams. At Le Bonheur, the patients are weighed in kilograms (1 kilogram=2.2 pounds), so this patient weighed only a mere 1.98 pounds when he was born. This was one of the tiniest babies I had ever seen, and he was swaddled tightly in a blanket in his incubator. Naudia explained to me that the babies are placed in the incubator since the incubator acts as an environment similar to the womb (warmth, humidity, minimal sound), so that the babies can continue developing. Additionally, this baby has hydrocephalus, meaning that that there is excessive accumulation of fluid in the brain, and he was going back for a surgery to have a shunt placed to drain the fluid.
Once we were finished in the NICU, we headed down to the CVICU, and I saw a patient that had been placed on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) due to extensive heart conditions and problems. While I was down there reviewing patient charts with Naudia, the infant's stats dropped and doctors and nurses had to efficiently work to stabilize the patient. I do not think I have ever seen so many cords and wires attached to a small child, and it was mind-blowing to see the ECMO machine working in action. Moreover, ECMO is a treatment that uses a pump to circulate blood through an artificial lung back into the bloodstream of a very ill baby.