Now pediatric researchers say that this longstanding practice of visual inspection is an unreliable method of predicting the baby's risk of hyperbilirubinemia. "Our study tells clinicians that our ability to estimate a baby's bilirubin level, or predict the baby's risk of developing clinically significant hyperbilirubinemia, by visually observing the extent of visual jaundice, is inadequate, and not very helpful," said study leader Ron Keren, M.D., M.P.H., a pediatrician in the Center for Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Only infants with a total absence of visible jaundice can confidently be expected to have a very low risk of hyperbilirubinemia. The yellowness comes from a blood byproduct, bilirubin, and a child that develops high levels of bilirubin has a potentially serious condition called hyperbilirubinemia. The study appeared in the online version of Archives of Disease in Childhood-Fetal and Neonatal Edition. Don't Rely on Jaundiced Eye for Assessing Newborns Study Challenges Com Medical Practice PHILADELPHIA, / - / -- For hundreds of years, doctors, nurses and midwives have visually examined newborn babies for the yellowish skin tones that signify jaundice, judging that more extensive jaundice carried a greater risk of illness.

Keren also is a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.