Heat Loss in Newborn Baby: Causes and Prevention
Who is Newborn?
According to World Health Organization (WHO), a newborn infant, or neonate, is a child under 28 days of age. During these first 28 days of life, the child is at highest risk of dying. It is thus crucial that appropriate feeding and care are provided during this period, both to improve the child’s chances of survival and to lay the foundations for a healthy life.
How a Newborn Baby Loses Heat?
A baby loses heat by the following ways:
- Evaporation: Wet surfaces exposed to air. Occurs: Immediately after birth.
- Conduction: Loss of heat via direct contact with cold surface. Ways baby loses heat.
- Convection: Loss of heat from body surface to cooler air currents.
- Radiation: Loss of heat via transfer of heat from body surface to cooler surfaces and objects not in direct contact with the body.
- Additional factors that contribute to heat loss in baby:
- Poor insulation due to lower subcutaneous fat,
- Decreased brown fat,
- More permeable skin,
- large surface area than term babies,
- Poorer physiological response to hypothermia and early exhaustion of metabolic stores like glucose.
Causes of Heat Loss of Newborn:
Several features predispose a newborn to lose heat. The following characteristics are:
- The neonate’s skin is thin.
- The newborn’s blood vessels are close to the surface. Causes of heat loss of newborn.
- Little subcutaneous or white fat is present to serve as a barrier for heat loss. (The percentage of subcutaneous fat in newborns is only half in adults.
- Newborns have three times more surface area to body mass than adults.
How to Prevent Heat Loses in Newborn?
The below ways should follow to prevent heat loss of newborn:
1. Evaporation
Prevention:
- Dry quickly, wrap, and place hat on baby at birth.
- During baths wrap baby while washing head.
- Wrap and hat baby p bath to allow baby temperature to stabilize.
2. Conduction
Prevention:
- Warming the objects that will touch an infant.
- Placing an infant against the mother’s skin helps prevent conductive heat loss.
- Place blanket on cold scale and zero out.
- Warm Stethoscope and hands.
3. Convection
Prevention:
- Keeping the newborn out of drafts.
- Maintaining warm environmental temperature.
- Keeping a preterm neonate in an incubator.
- Perform necessary procedures efficiently, Keep baby well wrapped & capped, Moisturize & heat oxygen.
4. Radiation
Prevention:
- Line incubator with blanket to insulate from incubator side.
- Keep away from drafts and walls.
More questions related to this article:
- Mention the ways baby loses heat.
- Mention some possible ways of losing heat in a newborn baby.
- What are the causes of heat loss of newborn baby?
- Why are newborns more prone to losing heat?
- How will prevent heat loses of newborn?
- What are the processes of heat loss in new born?
- What are the methods of heat loss in ne born?
- How to prevent conductive heat loss in a newborn?
- How to prevent newborn heat loss via conduction?
Maria Khatun Mona is a Founder and Editor of Nursing Exercise Blog. She is a Nursing and Midwifery Expert. Currently she is working as a Registered Nurse at Evercare Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has great passion in writing different articles on Nursing and Midwifery. Mail her at “[email protected]”
