Approximately 10% require some assistance to begin breathing after birth, and one in 1000 require extensive recuscitation after delivery.
Indicated for newborns experiencing a difficult transition to extra uterine life.
A team effort and requires multiple psychomotor and procedural skills.
The fetal circulation has parallel circulations, intracardiac and extra cardiac shunts, a high pulmonary vascular resistnce and a relatively low systemic vascular resisitance, while upon delivery the newborn has right and left ventricles that are in series, shunts close, pulmonary vascular resistance decreaes ad systemic vascular resistance increases.
Gas exchange occurs in the placenta during intrauterine life, while it occurs in the lungs during extra uterine life.
Fetal cardiac anatomy differs from a normal newborn with two atria, two ventricles and two great arteries, a foramen ovale, ductus arteriosus and ductus venosus.
In utero two large shunts exist, one between the atrium-the formen ovale and one between the pulmonary artery and aorta, the ductus arteriosus.