Comments on Uncompromised Airways: Cyanotic heart defects: cool mnemonic

Thanks for posting this! As an echo tech I find i...

2011-09-19T19:39:28.410-05:00

Thanks for posting this! As an echo tech I find it useful...

Wow... so her skin had covered every color in the ...

2010-10-08T16:21:09.877-05:00

Wow... so her skin had covered every color in the neonatal rainbow.

Usually in the NICU we see the opposite end of your daughter's situation. We'll have a scrawny, anemic preemie who is saturating 70% and we're wondering if the reading is accurate because the baby isn't cyanotic.

Thanks for your comments!

Well I think you just solved the mystery, because ...

2010-10-07T18:03:20.929-05:00

Well I think you just solved the mystery, because she also had an *extremely* high red cell count! When she wasn't blue or yellow (she had bad jaundice too) she was bright red.

Interesting. Newborns in general can be pretty unp...

2010-10-07T15:43:13.289-05:00

Interesting. Newborns in general can be pretty unpredictable and sometimes we just throw up our hands. Most cases of cyanosis are related to a lung/oxygenation issue, but we suspect cyanotic cardiac defects if oxygen administration doesn't cause a rise in the blood's oxygen level.

A VSD is typically acyanotic, but if you have a VSD and your pulmonary artery pressures go up, that will reverse the direction of shunting of blood through the defect and can cause cyanosis.

Another interesting thing: A newborn needs 3-5 g/dL of desaturated hemoglobin in order to cause cyanosis. As a result, babies with high hemoglobin/hematocrit counts could turn blue at near normal saturations, while anemic babies might not develop cyanosis until their sats are ridiculously low.

My daughter baffled the NICU staff by presenting w...

2010-10-06T21:31:17.723-05:00

My daughter baffled the NICU staff by presenting with marked cyanotic spells but revealing only a medium VSD on the echo. Supposedly that shouldn't be possible so I don't know what she was up to, there.