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Neonatology

About the Department / Program
Neonatology Unit was started in the year 1988, as part of the department of Pediatrics, which evolved into a division of Neonatology in 2004 and further into a Department of Neonatology in 2012. We attend to about 5000 intramural births every year. We provide care for about 2000 babies as in-patients and 6000 babies as out-patients annually.

Infrastructure
Our unit has 6500sq.ft area (centrally air-conditioned) with 24 ICU/ HDU beds, 29 special care nursery beds and 10 Kangaroo Mother Care beds, with the low cost center and the paying wards having equal number of beds. We are a well-equipped unit with 17 ventilators including 2 transport ventilators and ambulance, 9 high-frequency oscillators, inhaled Nitric Oxide, 15 CPAP units (both bubble and flow-driver), incubators and warmers, multiparameter monitors, pulse-oximeters and adequate phototherapy units. We have centralized oxygen, UPS back up and 24 hour generator back up for all the equipments. We have in-house blood gas analyzer, centralized NABL-accredited laboratory, blood bank and a fully-stocked Pharmacy for 24 hours a day.
We have 24 hour computer and internet access at a number of locations, a well-equipped department library and a large central library.

Human resources
Our unit is run by a team of 14 specialty doctors and 80 nurses. These specialists offer 24x7 cover for NICU, high-risk deliveries and neonatal transport. In addition we have specialists in the field of metabolic disorders (IEM), Pediatric surgery including cardiac surgery and other pediatric sub-specialties.

Services offered
Neonatology department cares for babies less than 28 days of age and preterm babies above 24 weeks of gestation. Our expertise is in care of high risk newborn, especially VLBWs (babies below 1500g), extreme preterm babies (<28 weeks), surgical babies and babies with IEM. Ours is the first unit to get level-IIIb NNF-accreditation (2014). We are one of the largest neonatal cardiac surgical centers in TamilNadu. We provide holistic care with state-of-the-art facilities including ECMO support for high-risk term infants and premature infants. We are well equipped to transport sick neonates from other centers within a 60km radius.

 Neonatal Screening services

Our department emphasizes preventive aspect of newborn care as an inseparable and invaluable component of neonatology. We provide Immunization and universal screening programmes to detect hearing loss, hypothyroidism, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, critical congenital heart disease and metabolic disorders for the newborn babies.

 Newborn follow up services
All newborn babies are followed up till 1 month of age and care is then transferred to the Pediatrics Department. All high-risk preterm and term babies discharged from NICU get a comprehensive neurodevelopmental follow-up till 6 years of age, including developmental, nutritional, speech and language and ophthalmological assessments.

Community outreach services
Doctors and nurses from our department, partnering with the department of Public Health, are actively involved in training doctors and nurses throughout TamilNadu in the BNCRP programme (Since 2012).