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November 14, 2004
Cord care

The other day in the office we had a very concerned couple bring in their first newborn child.  The parents were concerned because the 12 day old's umbilical cord fell off but now his umbilicus was oozing and they were afraid it was infected.  Upon examination it was determined to be normal and no treatment was initiated, and the parents were reassured but told that it was very important to keep the area clean and to use alcohol wipes to prevent infection.

I wondered what affect alcohol wipes or other modes of cord care had on the prevention of infection.  I found an article on the subject, and apparently it is under much debate.  There have been many studies on this, however it is surprising that there are no significant differences with infection rates between the different treatments, be it alcohol wipes, chlorhexidine treatment, or just leaving it dry.  Many studies I found showed that leaving it dry resulted in it falling off earlier with no difference in infection rates.  Yes, they may smell and be gross, but I think it may help parents to know that they need not obsess about keeping them clean, because they have enough to worry about already with a new baby.

Posted At : 9:37 PM. | Link | Rotation 2 04-05 | Comments (9)

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Comments

This seems to be a topic that is covered frequently...and while I was in pediatrics we heard a lot about this....but seriously jeff...are babies smelly and gross? You know you want 5 or 6. Good point about the burdening of parents with unnecessary worries.

Posted By John Mastrangelo / Posted At 11/14/04 9:55 PM

Good to the point blog. Tell me about all the other stuff parents have to worry about, besides umbilical cord care. I was told to leave my son's alone when he was born, no alcohol, no infection either.

Posted By Camele Alisa White / Posted At 11/15/04 8:14 PM

hey, babies were being born before the time of alcohol swabs and i'm sure they didn't all have umbilical cord infections. just let them fall off when they're ready.

Posted By Rajanya Shah / Posted At 11/16/04 8:04 PM

good quick to the point blog Jeff, This was told to me during pediatrics its nice to know that the evidence supports this,...can anything bad happen if you use Alcohol?

Posted By Michael Paul / Posted At 11/16/04 9:15 PM

The pediatrician I worked with discouraged use of alcohol. He just incouraged to keep the site dry like you found in the articles. Good job

Posted By Denis Knobel / Posted At 11/18/04 2:20 PM

Very interesting information about cord care... I'm sure it will come in handy later when we do OB/Gyn! :-)

Posted By Robin Holzer / Posted At 11/18/04 3:57 PM

good job- this is pratical info that we can use.

Posted By Christine HaeJun Kim / Posted At 11/18/04 5:34 PM

Seems like nature would have figured out a way of taking care of this problem at some point in our evolution. I guess this just goes to show we are obsessed with "doing something" even if the best thing might be just to leave things alone.

Posted By Jason Vachon / Posted At 11/18/04 8:04 PM

another interesting fact is that IF it gets infected and the infection persists or repeats, it could indicate a C5 complement deficiency.

Posted By rodius / Posted At 1/24/05 1:24 PM