New tech lets Surrey NICU doctors monitor babies’ ‘most important organ’

Staff at Surrey Memorial Hospital in British Columbia are celebrating the arrival of new technology that could help save the lives of some of their tiniest patients.

“The brain is the most important organ but the least monitored organ in the ICU, and this device will provide better brain monitoring,” pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Samer Yousfi told Global News.

Yousfi was talking about near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) monitoring devices, four of which have been installed in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which treats premature and vulnerable newborns.

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NIRS devices are not new in hospital settings, but technology has only recently advanced enough for them to be used on infant patients.

The machines can monitor how much blood is being used in the brain, or other organs, and now supplement existing equipment that monitors things like breathing, heart rate and other vital signs.

Yousfi said the tool allows doctors and nurses to better tailor their care for vulnerable infants by adding real-time information about what is happening with their brains to the other data they have about a baby’s condition.

“The brain is an important organ because it affects babies’ long-term development outcomes,” Yousfi said.

“If I have a scar in my lung, if I have an injury to my liver if I have an injury to my kidney, most likely I will recover. But if I have an injury to my brain I will have to live with it the rest of my life.”

Yousfi estimated that about one in eight infants in the NICU will need additional monitoring.

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Nurse educator Sonya Bal said an education campaign is now underway among NICU staff, as well as with parents.

“This is something they have not seen before, so we are really working on our parent education, explaining what it is, and they are very excited,” she said.

“(It gives us) a lot of confidence, we can monitor and interpret the data as it is coming hourly and make those informed decisions.”

Surrey Memorial’s NICU is among the first in B.C. to acquire the technology.

The hospital’s four new NIRS devices cost about $15,000 each, with funding through the Surrey Hospitals Foundation.

“We applied it on one of our babies just a few days ago, and after I explained this technology in two or three hours I was just passing by the room and I asked the nurse, ‘How is the brain doing?'” Yousfi said.

“Her answer was, ‘The brain is happy, it is using just the right amount of oxygen, not too much, not too little.’ She made my day. That’s how much the staff are excited.”