Prophylactic intravenous calcium therapy for exchange blood transfusion in the newborn.

CONCLUSIONS: Very low-quality data from one quasi-randomised controlled trial suggested that the mean serum total and ionised calcium increased in the study group but decreased in the control group immediately after EBT. However, the mean values of total and ionised calcium in both arms of studies remained within international reference ranges. Unfortunately, data were not available to assess the trend of total and ionised serum calcium to the end of the first week after EBT. Therefore, due to the very low quality of evidence available, it is difficult to support or reject the continual use of prophylactic intravenous calcium in newborn infants receiving EBT. Researchers are encouraged to conduct more robustly designed trials with larger numbers of participants, and particularly, addressing the pattern of differences based on gestational age of participants, type of anticoagulant used, and the volume of blood used. PMID: 29022989 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research