1. Delivery of 100% oxygen is only margi-nally
different whether one uses the facemask or endotracheal tube for
assisted ventilation in the delivery room. However, in the present
study(1), 21% in the oxygen group and 18% in the room air grops (p
>0.05) were ventilated via the endo-tracheal tube.
2. In bio-statistics when the median is presented,
one uses either the range or the quartiles/centiles to represent the
variation around the median value. We chose quartiles, which is
conventionally accept-able. But it must be noted that for analytic
purposes none of the values were ignored.
3. The present study was conducted amongst a
sub-population of an original multi-centric study(2) for which the
inclusion criteria was all birth weights >999 g. In this subset
since most of the babies included were term babies >2000g, it was
decided to take only normal term controls for this part of the study.
The mean (SD) birth weight of controls was 2577 (541) g and that of
asphyxiated babies 2388 (630) g. The gestations too were similar with
a mean of 37 weeks in both groups.
4. The reason as to why 90% saturation was taken as
primary outcome variable was because this level corresponds to PaO2
of about 55-60 mmHg. However, some earlier studies have suggested that
most newborns after birth have oxygen saturation between 75-80% in the
first 5 minutes after birth(3). Therefore, time to achieve SaO2
of 75% was taken as secondary variable. There are scant studies on
time required to pick up recordings by pulse oximeter in the delivery
room and therefore it was selected as a secondary outcome variable to
look at the effects of asphyxia on pulse oximetry recordings.
