Child chiller provides cooling cure

When babies are deprived of oxygen before birth, brain damage and disorders such as cerebral palsy can occur.

Extended cooling can prevent brain injuries, but this treatment is not always available in developing nations where advanced medical care is scarce.

To address this need, Johns Hopkins undergraduates have devised a low-tech $40 unit to provide protective cooling in the absence of modern hospital equipment that can cost $12,000.

Dubbed Cooling Cure, the device aims to lower a newborn’s temperature by about 6oF for three days, a treatment that has been shown to protect the child from brain damage if administered shortly after a loss of oxygen has occurred.

Common causes of this deficiency are knotting of the umbilical cord or a problem with the mother’s placenta during a difficult birth. In developing regions, untrained delivery, anaemia and malnutrition during pregnancy can also contribute to oxygen deprivation.

In a recent issue of the journal Medical Devices: Evidence and Research, the biomedical engineering student inventors and their medical advisors reported successful animal testing of the Cooling Cure prototype.