A new network of Florida hospitals is working to provide babies born with a high risk of brain injury with the innovative treatments they need to survive.
Each year, 10 to 15 babies are born at Shands at UF with the potential for brain injury, Dr. Michael Weiss said. This may be the result of a problem with the placenta or the umbilical cord, such as if the cord wraps around the baby’s neck and restricts oxygen flow.
Problems like these are why Weiss helped form the Florida Neonatal Neurologic Network, a statewide, eight-hospital network dedicated to providing treatments for infant brain injury.
For example, a prominent therapy called “cooling,” which lowers a baby’s body temperature by about three degrees in an effort to decrease the risk of brain damage, can help save one in eight babies from brain injury but isn’t widely available throughout the state, Weiss said.
He said there are plans to expand the treatment to other health care facilities in Florida.
“The thing we can do immediately is make sure all babies in the state of Florida are near facilities that use cooling,” Weiss said.
The network officially launches in July and also will conduct medical research using information from its member hospitals. The Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UF made an in-kind donation providing a database system, said Jim Lennon, assistant director of finance for the institute.
In addition to doctors, the network includes scientists who are able to research new treatments that can help the infants not saved by cooling therapy.
“The purpose of the network moving forward is that cooling is only going to help one in eight babies,” Weiss said. “We really want to help those other seven babies.”
