In the group of babies who received the cooling treatment, 56% survived and avoided moderate to severe disability, compared to 38% of the babies who received standard supportive treatment.

Yanick, who weighed 10 pounds at birth, was deprived of oxygen for an unknown length of time as doctors worked to free her from the birth canal. She might have died or spent her life severely disabled. Instead, she was placed on a cooling blanket for three days to lower her brain and body temperature in an effort to prevent permanent brain damage.

Yanick was one of more than 200 newborns included in a multiyear study of the technique at 15 medical centers around the country, including the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine/Jackson Memorial Hospital where she was born.

Cooling the babies' body temperatures to 92 degrees Fahrenheit -- from the typical 98.6 degrees -- for 72 hours before gradually rewarming them, helped some of them, but not all, according to research published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Improved Outcomes

About half the 208 newborns in the research study received the treatment and half were treated in the traditional way such babies are cared for, which is to provide supportive care such as supplemental oxygen or medication if the baby has a seizure.

In the group of babies who received the cooling treatment, 56 percent survived and avoided what was classified as moderate to severe disability. Of the babies who received standard supportive treatment, 62 percent died or suffered moderate to severe disability, such as cerebral palsy, blindness or hearing impairment, the researchers said.

About one in 1,000 babies suffer from deprivation of oxygen during the birth process, a condition known as hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which can cause cerebral palsy and other disabilities.

"Something has happened in the birth process that prevents the baby from getting oxygen, something with the cord, or the mother's blood pressure, or the baby gets stuck somewhere," said Dr. Shahnaz Duara, medical director of the newborn intensive care unit at the hospital. "If it's very extreme, the baby dies. If it's very minor, we don't even pick up on it. So it's the ones where it affects the baby's system that would [get the treatment.]"

Practice Guideline

Because the study showed that cooling the babies is protective, it has become standard treatment at Jackson, Duara said, and the researchers, members of the Neonatal Research Network sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, will recommend that it become the standard of care for all full-term babies who are deprived of oxygen during the birth process.

"We would like the American Academy of Pediatrics to pick this up and write a practice guideline, because that gets disseminated to thousands of pediatricians all over the country," Duara said.

Special training will be necessary for the doctors and nurses who want to adopt the technique, and until more are trained, Duara said it is important for doctors in South Florida to know the treatment is available at Jackson should they have a baby who might benefit. It would be necessary to get them to the unit within six hours of birth, she said.

Not Studied in Preemies

Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, said the treatment should not be attempted without proper training.

"It would be premature to implement the study results under any but the most carefully controlled and monitored circumstances," Alexander said. "The potential for serious harm exists if the conditions in this protocol are not carried out precisely as they were in the study by personnel skilled in their use."

All the babies in the study were full term or near full-term. The technique has not been studied in preemies.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel correspondent Thomas Monnay contributed to this report.