This episode on Happy Hour with Bundle Birth Nurses, Sarah Lavonne dives into an analysis of cord gas essentials. Understanding cord gas results is essential in guiding newborn care, particularly for identifying infants at risk of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) who may need therapeutic cooling.

Sarah breaks down the basics of interpreting arterial and venous cord gases, explaining why parameters like pH, PCO2, and base deficit matter so much. They discuss the signs of respiratory and metabolic acidosis, how each can impact a newborn’s health, and why proper sample collection is so important—especially in settings without immediate NICU access.

In this episode, you’ll learn how these essential numbers reveal vital clues about a newborn’s condition, empowering nurses to support and advocate for newborns from the very start. Lastly, you can listen podcast episode #71 Cord Gas Essentials: What L&D Nurses Need to Know on Spotify or Apple Podcast.

EDIT at 12:59: ACOG says 7.0 for pH, AWHONN says 7.1,
What the research shows is that injury occurs at 7.18, and injury becomes more likely as you continue to move towards 7.0. Normal pH is actually considered to be 7.2.

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