"Delayed Cord Clamping Should Be Standard Practice in Obstetrics"

Here is a link to a brilliant blog by Dr. Nicholas Fogelson OB about delayed cord clamping. I know that many of you will feel vindicated by his article and will want to read the numerous links and studies that he posts at the end of his blog.

In the comments at the end of the blog Dr. Fogelson comments thathe might develope this further into a peer-reviewed article. That is an article that I will look forward to reading.

Delayed Cord Clamping Should Be Standard Practice in Obstetrics

Dr. Nicholas Fogelson

There are times in our medical careers where we see a shift in thought that leads to a completely different way of doing things. This happened with episiotomy in the last few decades. Most recently trained physicians cannot imagine doing routine episiotomy with every delivery, yet it was not so long ago that this was common practice. ...

...For the majority of my career, I routinely clamped and cut the umbilical cord as soon as it was reasonable. Occasionally a patient would want me to wait to clamp and cut for some arbitrary amount of time, and I would wait, but in my mind this was just humoring the patient and keeping good relations. After all, I had seen all my attendings and upper level residents clamp and cut right away, so it must be the right thing, right?

Later in my career I was exposed to enough other-thinking minds to consider that maybe this practice was not right. And after some research I found that there was some pretty compelling evidence that indeed, early clamping is harmful for the baby. So much evidence in fact, that I am a bit surprised that as a community, OBs in the US have not developed a culture of delayed routine cord clamping for neonatal benefit.

HERE to read the complete blog and studies