Researchers advise parents to use car seats and car beds for transport only, not as crib substitute
TUESDAY, Aug. 25 (HealthDay News) -- A young infant's blood oxygen saturation level is lower when he or she is placed in a car seat or car bed compared to lying in a crib, according to a study published online Aug. 24 in Pediatrics.
Lilijana Kornhauser Cerar, M.D., of the University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and colleagues monitored 200 2-day-old infants in several settings: in the hospital crib (half an hour), in a car bed (one hour), and in a car seat (one hour). The researchers measured the infants' oxygen saturation, apnea frequency and type, hypopnea and bradycardia, and evaluated the data in a blinded fashion.
The researchers found that mean oxygen saturation level was reduced in the infant safety devices compared to the hospital crib: 96.3 percent for the car bed and 95.7 percent for the car seat, compared to 97.9 percent for the crib. Also, the mean minimal oxygen saturation level was lower in the car bed and car seat compared to the hospital crib (83.7, 83.6, and 87.4 percent, respectively).
"In healthy term newborns, significant desaturations were observed in both car beds and car seats as compared with hospital cribs. This study was limited by lack of documentation of sleep stage. Therefore, these safety devices should only be used for protection during travel and not as replacements for cribs," the authors conclude.
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