Blue baby syndrome
Please Take Over This Page and Apply to be Editor-In-Chief for this topic: There can be one or more than one Editor-In-Chief. You may also apply to be an Associate Editor-In-Chief of one of the subtopics below. Please mail us [1] to indicate your interest in serving either as an Editor-In-Chief of the entire topic or as an Associate Editor-In-Chief for a subtopic. Please be sure to attach your CV and or biographical sketch.
Blue baby syndrome (or simply, blue baby) is a layman's term used to describe newborns with cyanotic conditions, such as
Some pesticides(DDT, PCBs etc) ecotoxicological problems in the food chains of living organisms. It increases BOD which kills aquatic animals. This causes high nitrate contamination in ground water resulting in decreased oxygen carrying capacity of hemoglobin in babies leading to death. Methemoglobinemia also known as "blue baby syndrome"
Surgery
On November 29, 1944, the Johns Hopkins Hospital was the first to successfully perform an operation to relieve this syndrome. The syndrome was brought to the attention of surgeon Alfred Blalock and his laboratory assistant Vivien Thomas in 1943 by pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig, who had treated hundreds of children with Tetralogy of Fallot in her work at Hopkins' Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children. The two men adapted a surgical procedure they had earlier developed for another purpose, involving the anastomosis, or joining, of the subclavian artery to the pulmonary artery, which allowed the blood another chance to become oxygenated. The procedure became known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt, although in recent years the contribution of Vivien Thomas, both experimentally and clinically, has been widely acknowledged.
References
- Thomas, Vivien T (1985). Partners of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock (originally published as Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascuar Surgery: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock). U. Penn . Press.