Medical Breakthroughs

1. Physiological Cord Clamping

A pathbreaking research study on Physiological Cord Clamping was carried out recently at Shrimad Rajchandra Hospital and Research Centre, one of the two centres chosen across India for carrying out the research. The findings of this study were published as an original article in the 30 May, 2019, issue of the prestigious American Journal of Perinatology. The global practice prevailing currently involves cutting the umbilical cord within one to two minutes of delivery and forcing the placenta out of the birth canal with medical assistance.

In contrast to this, this study demonstrates the enormously important benefits available to the mother and baby, when, during delivery, the umbilical cord is cut after the placenta is expelled from the birth canal on its own, without medical assistance.

This study was carried out under the guidance and supervision of Professor Dr Arun Singh, MBBS, MD, National Advisor to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, for the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (National Child Health Programme).

2. Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI)

Cerebral visual impairment (CVI), one of the most common causes of childhood blindness in the developed world, is increasingly being detected in the Indian scenario as well. CVI is a condition in which despite normally developed eyes, a child is unable to see owing to defects in the neural pathways connecting the eyes to the brain or within the brain itself.

There is no drug treatment that has proved to be effective in the treatment of CVI; however, vision therapy along with multisensory system integration has been found to be effective in the improvement of functional vision.