| 1 week 3 days 5 hours ago Incubators may affect newborns' heart rates
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(NECN/ABC) - New research suggests that incubators have the ability to affect newborn babies' heart rates.
Incubators are widely used to help keep sick and premature babies warm while minimizing stress.
But preliminary results suggest that the electromagnetic fields generated by the incubators may interfere with babies' heart rates.
Doctors in Italy studied 43 healthy newborns while they lay quietly.
27 babies were tested in the incubators, both with the machines off and with them on.
The 16 remaining babies served as a control group.
Results showed that babies in the incubators experienced decreases in heart rate variability when the machines were on - the control group had no such heartbeat changes.
Decreases in heart rate variability mean a poor prognosis for adults with heart disease, but what it means for babies isn't clear.
Heart rate variability increased again when the incubators were turned off, so researchers are calling for more study to determine if there are any lasting effects on the infants' health.
ABC's Dr. Timothy Johnson reports.
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