Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Evaluate safety and efficacy of filtered-sunlight phototherapy (FS-PT). METHODS: Term/late preterm infants ≤14 days old with clinically significant jaundice, assessed by total bilirubin (TB) levels, were recruited from a maternity hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Sunlight was filtered with commercial window-tinting films that remove most UV and significant levels of infrared light and transmit effective levels of therapeutic blue light. After placing infants under an FS-PT canopy, hourly measurements of axillary temperatures, monitoring for sunburn, dehydration, and irradiances of filtered sunlight were performed. Treatment was deemed safe and efficacious if infants were able to stay in FS-PT for ≥5 hours and rate of rise of TB was <0.2 mg/dL/h for infants ≤72 hours of age or TB decreased for infants >72 hours of age. RESULTS: A total of 227 infants received 258 days of FS-PT. No infant developed sunburn or dehydration. On 85 (33%) of 258 treatment days, infants were removed briefly from FS-PT due to minor temperature-related adverse events. No infant met study exit criteria. FS-PT was efficacious in 92% (181/197) of evaluable treatment days. Mean ± SD TB change was -0.06 ± 0.19 mg/dL/h. The mean ± SD (range) irradiance of FS-PT was 38 ± 22 (2-115) μW/cm2/nm, measured by the BiliBlanket Meter II. CONCLUSIONS: With appropriate monitoring, filtered sunlight is a novel, practical, and inexpensive method of PT that potentially offers safe and efficacious treatment strategy for management of neonatal jaundice in tropical countries where conventional PT treatment is not available.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | e1568-e1574 |
Journal | Pediatrics |
Volume | 133 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 1 2014 |
Keywords
- Hyperbilirubinemia
- IR
- Irradiance
- Low-middle income countries
- Newborn jaundice
- Phototherapy
- Sunlight
- UV