Through a generous donation by Robert and Kathleen Israel, Children’s of Alabama is now home to new technology that helps dramatically prevent brain injury and improve brain development and function in its sickest patients.
Children’s of Alabama is thrilled to announce a very generous gift of a cutting-edge technology designed to help reduce the risk of brain injury in preterm infants. The gift was donated by Robert and Kathleen Israel in honor of the care their daughter, Ivy, received in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in 2018. Ivy is home and doing very well. “The NICU team at Children’s of Alabama saved our daughter’s life,” said Robert Israel, “and we are forever grateful.”
“This new technology made possible by the Israel family is helping us dramatically prevent brain injury and improve brain development and function in our sickest patients,” said Manimaran Ramani, M.D., director of the NeuroNICU program.
Preterm infants born at 30 weeks or earlier are at higher risk for developing intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), which is associated with long-term neurocognitive and motor deficits. The risk for neurocognitive and motor deficits is also higher for term infants with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), seizures, metabolic disorders, or stroke, and those undergoing ECMO therapy.
However, a multidisciplinary initiative in the NICU at Children’s of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) called NeuroNICU B.R.A.I.N. (Brain Rescue and Avoidance of Injury in Neonates) aims to prevent and reduce neurocognitive and motor deficits in high-risk neonates.
The objective of the B.R.A.I.N. program is to identify and prevent brain injury early in high-risk neonates through state-of-the-art diagnostic techniques and neuroprotective care. An interdisciplinary team of medical professionals meets every week to strategize individualized comprehensive neuroprotective plans for infants enrolled in B.R.A.I.N.
Though standard vital monitoring techniques used in NICUs such as blood pressure, heart rate and pulse oximetry provide valuable information about the infant’s hemodynamic status, such standard monitoring techniques don’t provide real-time information regarding the brain’s oxygenation saturation, oxygenation extraction and perfusion status of a sick neonate.
This is where infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) monitoring comes in. “This technology allows us to monitor cerebral oxygenation in very sick infants,” Ramani said. It is a non-invasive method that can be used continually at the bedside as well as during surgery to monitor the health of the brain. It can also be combined with amplitude-integrated electroencephalography (aEEG) to monitor cerebral electrical activity and to diagnose seizures in sick neonates in real-time.
“With the two NIRS devices donated by the Israel family, we are now able to monitor the brain health and adjust our therapies and strategies in real-time on our patients,” Ramani said.
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