Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the 1st Exchange Transfusion for Icterus Gravis Neonatorum

The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society has invited Dr. Jon F. Watchko, MD, Professor Emeritus in the Division of Newborn Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to present a lecture commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first exchange transfusion for severe neonatal jaundice. He will cover the groundbreaking work of Alfred P. Hart and L. Bruce Robertson at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, November 19, 2024, from 7-8pm, via Zoom. Watch this space for the link to join the livestream.

Exchange transfusion (ET) is a procedure that couples alternating blood removal (exsanguination) with blood infusion (transfusion) to accomplish its beneficial effect. ET has been a mainstay of treating hazardous neonatal hyperbilirubinemia (severe jaundice) for a 100 years dating back to Alfred P. Hart’s seminal use of the procedure in a newborn with familial icterus gravis neonatorum at the Hospital for Sick Children Toronto in 1924. Its novel application by Hart at that time and at the Hospital for Sick Children was no accident. The history of the development of ET as a viable treatment intervention and its original application to neonatal hyperbilirubinemia by Hart in 1924 is commemorated in this C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society presentation.

Dr. Watchko has a keen interest in the pathobiology of bilirubin-induced brain injury and clinical strategies to prevent kernicterus. His early work focused on unconjugated bilirubin brain uptake and clearance, determination of in vivo neurotoxic central nervous system bilirubin thresholds in the Gunn rat model of acute bilirubin encephalopathy (ABE) and in human neonates with kernicterus, pharmacologic neuroprotection against ABE, and bilirubin-induced cerebellar hypoplasia. More recently he has conducted clinical studies on improving the identification of infants at risk for significant hyperbilirubinemia and bilirubin neurotoxicity. Dr. Watchko is recognized as a world authority on neonatal jaundice, authored more than 200 academic papers, chapters and reviews, and co-edited two books, Neonatal Jaundice (2000) and Care of the Jaundiced Neonate (2012). He serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics National Hyperbilirubinemia Clinical Practice Subcommittee and is a member of the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Pediatric Society, and the Perinatal Research Society.

Image credit: "Intensive phototherapy Our area has as a very high level of newborn jaundice, which is sometimes fatal. The treatment is phototherapy for less severe cases, exchange blood transfusion for the more serious ones. This special, intense blue phototherapy lamp (NeoBLUE) was donated by Natus Medical, Inc. with the assistance of Henk J. Vreman, Ph.D., at Stanford University Dept. of Pediatrics.  (ECWA Evangel Hospital, Jos, Nigeria)" ~California pediatrician Mike Blyth, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society thanks its dues-paying members and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law for its support of the continuing relevance of medical history in our world.