Life-Saving Technologies

Many of the babies admitted to the NICU are premature (born before 37 weeks), have a low birth weight (less than 5 lbs 8 oz) or have a medical condition that requires special care such as heart problems, infections, jaundice or birth defects. The specialized care team at Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach uses state-of-the-art technology to treat their tiny patients, resulting in one of the highest risk-adjusted survival rates.

Leading technologies help to treat more than 1,000 critically ill babies each year.

• Giraffe OMNI Beds
  The advanced, user-friendly and developmentally supportive microenvironment combines state of the art technology and innovative design to create an ideal healing environment for intensively ill infants. The beds combine an incubator with a warmer, keeping the baby in one machine instead of having to be moved back and forth between the two machines.
  
  
• Advanced Ventilation
  Miller Children's uses the latest advances in ventilator management for NICU babies including:  
  • air pressure release ventilation -- results in lower airway pressures, lower minute ventilation, minimal adverse effects on cardio-circulatory function, ability to spontaneously breathe throughout the entire ventilatory cycle, decreased sedation use, and near elimination of neuromuscular blockade
  • high-frequency jet ventilation -- a high pressure ‘’jet’’ of gas flows out of the adaptor and into the airway. This jet of gas occurs for a very brief duration, at high frequency.  Jet ventilation has been shown to reduce ventilator induced lung injury by as much as 20 percent
  • high-frequency oscillatory ventilation -- the pressure oscillates around the constant distending pressure and gas is pushed into the lung duringinspiration, and then pulled out during expiration. In some neonatal patients HFOV may be used as the first-line ventilator due to the high susceptibility of the premature infant to lung injury from conventional ventilation.
  • sophisticated conventional mechanical ventilation modalities
• Vein Viewer
  The “Vein Viewer” helps nurses find a vein on a very small baby, without having to do “multiple sticks.” The viewer uses infrared light in a non-invasive procedure to allow the smallest of veins to be clearly seen.