Quote:
Originally Posted by joema
A slight clarification: it's my understanding with optimal dosing of EPO and IV iron, hemoglobin will often start to increase within one week. That's for an adult, don't know about premature infants. During that interim period hyperbaric oxygen is a possible solution. Don't know why that wasn't considered.
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Thanks for the clarification.
Considering how fast it was falling, and how fragile these babies were (they were several months premature, less than 2 lbs each), I don't think EPO and IV iron would have stabalized them fast enough. They were already critically anemic and falling fast.
If they had caught it earlier, I'm sure it would have been a viable option. (There's no info about what happened in the last 3 months, just that 3 babies were seized following the death of 2 others...)
As for the hyperbaric oxygen, it would depend on the availability of a hyperbaric chamber. Plus there are risks, such as how to deal with an emergency should the child worsen (you can't just remove them and move them to an OR, you'd have to wait for the pressure to return to normal).
I'm sure that the doctors considered all these alternatives, because going to the courts is a) going to cause a lot of fuss, and b) is time consuming, which could be better spent treating the children.