The neonatal pruning test, also called a neonatal size test, is a laboratory test that should be performed on all newborns between the 2nd and 5th day of life, usually performed in the maternity ward where the baby was born.
The test involves taking a few drops of blood from your baby’s blood and placing them on a filter paper that is sent to a neonatal screening lab to check if your baby has a metabolic disease such as phenylketonuria, hypothyroidism, or a congenital condition such as hypothyroidism. The sample is sent with the mother’s identification, address and contact phone details, as well as the indication of where the sample was taken.
- If changes are made to the heel board.
- The lab contacts the family and the place where the child was picked up.
- Instructing the baby to undergo further tests to confirm the disease.
Heel prairie should be done between the 2nd and 5th day of birth, however, if for some reason it is not possible to take it during these days, it can be done during the first month of the baby’s life.
The tip of the claw is used to diagnose some serious diseases early, such as:
There are also more complete problems such as increasing the size of the newborn, for example, that detect other diseases besides those mentioned above.
See a more complete list of diseases identified in this problem: Diseases detected by the claw problem.
Neonatal screening should detect phenylketonuria and congenital hypothyroidism, but in some countries it can also detect other serious diseases such as:
Basic neonatal screening is done for free in public health centers, but priests want an expanded program, so the general has to pay for the test.
The enlarged neonatal size, in addition to detecting diseases by basic size measurement, detects 30 other diseases such as galactosemia and congenital rubella, for example.