Background and aim: Although nuchal cord is a common occurrence at birth, there is little attention to its importance or management at birth, and teaching includes premature clamping and cutting of the cord as the common option.  Although grade 1 evidence is lacking, the optimal management of the nuchal cord,  the Somersault manoeuvre  is not taught or included in any current guidelines. What e...

OBJECTIVE Autologous blood transfusion from the placenta to the neonate at birth has been proven beneficial. Transfusion can be accomplished by either delayed cord clamping or cord stripping. Both are equally effective in previous randomized trials. We hypothesized that combining these 2 techniques would further improve outcomes in preterm neonates. STUDY DESIGN This was a prospective randomi...

The observation that a raised venous pressure appears to be of benefit to newborn babies with respiratory distress (Bonham Carter, Bound, and Smellie, 1956) led Bound, Harvey, and Bagshaw (1962) to assess the effect of delayed clamping of the umbilical cord of premature babies. In that investigation it was concluded that the placental transfusion was responsible for the lower incidence of respi...

The purpose of this study was to examine some aspects of umbilical cord blood collection for autologous transfusion in premature infants. All 120 microbacterial cultures (aerobic and anaerobic) of cord blood samples as well as 30 cultures of mycoplasma were treated. Cord prothrombin fragment (F 1 + 2) concentrations were quantified at one and 10 minutes after clamping of the cord. F 1 + 2 conce...

Background Worldwide, millions of babies are born each day, and in many of these infants, the umbilical cord is severed and they must begin air-breathing to survive. These events dramatically change the infant’s circulation, transforming it from the fetal to the postnatal form, which then persists for the rest of its life[1,2]. However, if an infant is not breathing at birth, umbilical cord cla...