Question about cord gasses

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Specializes in NICU.

I currently work in a post-partum and newborn nursery unit but have applied for a NICU position. My question is how much weight do you give bad cord gasses on a newborns transition. L&D has a fit when they're below 7.15 but a NICU nurse said that they mean nothing. I suspect that the OBs at my hospital augument labor too aggressively My unit is very busy and 95% of patients recieve pit because the OBs want nights and weekends off. It is not unheard of to have 8 c/s a day out of 8 deliveries espically after 1700. We have a ton of babies with TTN. What are your thoughts?

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I currently work in a post-partum and newborn nursery unit but have applied for a NICU position. My question is how much weight do you give bad cord gasses on a newborns transition. L&D has a fit when they're below 7.15 but a NICU nurse said that they mean nothing. I suspect that the OBs at my hospital augument labor too aggressively My unit is very busy and 95% of patients recieve pit because the OBs want nights and weekends off. It is not unheard of to have 8 c/s a day out of 8 deliveries espically after 1700. We have a ton of babies with TTN. What are your thoughts?
The OB's at my hospital sound like they trained with yours... we have a lot of 37 week inductions so they can deliver their own patients before going on vacation...

In our nursery, we note cord gasses, but our pediatricians base care off what our babies are doing. The OB docs seem more interested in the cord gasses than we ever are. My most common problem with a cord gas is my LPN confuses that gas with the infant's gas and freaks out when she sees a SaO2 of 49% and starts giving oxygen without telling me.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, educator.

A cord gas is most valuable if anything goes to court. It will show if there was a problem before birth compared to afterwards.

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I can't say I've ever looked at cord gasses or even heard them mentioned on the unit. It's true there are many factors playing into them at birth. If we are at a delivery or get a fresh baby and it looks like one is warnted, we just get an iStat and work from that.

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