ABSTRACT:
Introduction & Objective: Jundice is the most common problem that can occur in the newborn. Although most jaundiced infants are otherwise perfectly healthy, jundice makes us anxious because bilirubin is potentially toxic to the central nervous system. Phototherapy is a highly effective method for prevention of exchange transfusion. The evaluation of the effect of mirror room on the decrease of hyperbilirubinemia is the purpose of this study.
Materials & Metods: In this clinical trial 60 term infants with the weight of more than 2500gr and the age of 72 hours who were admitted in Emam Sajad hospital (1384) for phototherapy were randiomized into two equal groups of phototherapy. The first group undertook the traditional method of phototherapy and the second group was placed in mirror room (creative method). Then the results of the 2 groups, including bilirubin on admission, after 12, 24 and 48 hours after admission, and duration of admission were analyzed using the statistical test of chi-square.
Results: In term infants the first 24 hour decline rate of bilirubin for traditional and mirror incubator phototherapy was 2.1± 1.1 and 3.6± 2.2 respectively (p< 0.01). The decline rate during the second day was 2.6± 1.3 in group one versus 3.8±2.4 in the second group (p<0.01). Duration of admission in the first group was 62.3±25 hours compared to 40.5± 28.6 hours in the second group (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The creative method mirror incubator had a better effect compared with traditional methods. It is comparable with double phototherapy and fibrobtic blanket methos. It could be an alternative model for double phototherapy as it produces reasonable cost effectiveness and is easy to apply.