Treatment of yellow children at home

How can jaundice be treated at home? What is the medical procedure to treat it? What are the complications of infection with this disease? Finally, how can it be prevented? This will be explained through the following lines:

How can jaundice be treated at home?

In the beginning, it must be noted that the treatment of jaundice at home is approved for mild cases, as they can improve within 2-3 weeks of infection. As for moderate and severe cases, they require a doctor to be diagnosed and treated correctly to avoid complications for the child.

Here are the ways to treat jaundice at home for minor cases only:

• Exposing the child to sunlight for 10 minutes twice a day, with the need to note that he is not exposed to direct sunlight.
• Changing the feeding patterns of the child, so that it is 8-12 times for breastfeeding and 30-60 milliliters of formula milk every 2-3 hours, as this frequency contributes to moving the intestines and increasing the amount of bilirubin excreted in the child’s waste.
• Placing the child under a fluorescent lamp with his eyes covered, as this contributes to adding oxygen to the bilirubin to facilitate its dissolution in water and thus the liver gets rid of it without facing any difficulties.
• Adoption of complementary feeding, which is recommended by the specialist doctor in case the child becomes dehydrated or loses weight, which means giving him formula milk or that withdrawn from the mother’s breast along with breastfeeding, in addition to the possibility of suggesting artificial feeding for a number of days and then returning to breastfeeding.

What is the medical treatment for jaundice in babies?

Advanced cases of children's jaundice , which vary between moderate and severe, require admission to the hospital, and the following is an explanation of the treatment strategies available there:

1. Get integrated nutrition

This is by taking nutritional supplements to avoid weight loss, which is done under medical supervision.

2. Baby phototherapy

Exposed to a lamp with light in the blue-green spectrum, this type of treatment changes the shape and size of bilirubin, so that it can be eliminated from the body through feces and urine.

3. Intravenous immunoglobulin injection

This treatment is used when the bile in children is caused by the difference in blood types between the mother and the child.

4. Blood transfusion and replacement

It is the last option approved by doctors in the event of severe jaundice and the body's failure to respond to any type of previous treatment.

As for the method, it is done in the neonatal intensive care unit and by repeatedly drawing small samples of the child’s blood and replacing them with others from the donor’s blood, thus reducing the concentration of bilirubin and antibodies transferred from the mother to the child.

What are the complications of jaundice in babies?

Treating jaundice at home is possible in the case of diagnosing jaundice among the minor cases that do not require medical intervention, but in the following, a clarification of a number of complications resulting from infection with it and not being diagnosed or treated in the correct way:

• Acute bilirubin encephalopathy, which results from the accumulation of this compound in brain cells.
• Kernicterus, which leads to permanent brain damage.
• Cerebral palsy .
• deafness;

How can jaundice be prevented in children?

Good nutrition is the first line of defense against infection with jaundice in children, so that the number of breastfeeding times ranges between 8-12 times per day and the adoption of this amount during their first days.

Those who are breast-feeding should take about 30-60 milliliters of it every 2-3 hours for the first 7 days.