Newborn APGAR scoring chart

Newborn APGAR Scoring Chart

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After delivery, one of the biggest concerns of every parent is whether the baby is healthy and normal or not. Doctors also try to confirm the health status of the baby before they hand over the baby to the parents. Usually, the physical condition of the newborn is assessed after two to five minutes by the doctors. The decision of the doctors and nurses is based on certain parameters. Usually, they use the APGAR scoring system to assess the physical health of the newborn.

What is the Newborn APGAR scoring chart?

A newborn goes through several tests to confirm that he is healthy and fit. These tests usually take one or two days to tell the result. However, doctors also perform some quick tests to quickly assess at the initial stage. For this purpose, a scoring chart is used which is known as the APGAR scoring chart.

How to use the APGAR scoring chart?

In general, there are five different categories into which an APGAR scoring chart is divided. From each category, a newborn can get a maximum of 2 marks and 10 marks in total. It is very common to not score 10 marks and usually, 7, 8, or 9 scores are considered normal.

The five categories usually help doctors assess the health of the newborn by checking the pulse rate, grimace, appearance of the baby, breathing of the baby, and muscle tone.  It is important to note that the baby is checked against all the parameters right after birth. If there is something wrong or the score is too low, the healthcare provider of the baby intervenes and tries to figure out the cause of the low score.

The medical staff keeps assessing the baby’s health until the score of the baby reaches the normal range. The baby is not sent home unless the score shows any improvement as this might put the life of the infant at stake.

What is the purpose of using the APGAR scoring chart?

APGAR scoring chart is used to assess how well a newborn is doing right after his birth. This information is very useful for doctors as well as parents. The score chart reveals if there is something wrong with the baby. Doctors find it easy to determine the physical health of the newborn and then based on the result, they take several important decisions.

Based on the score, doctors can declare a baby healthy. In some cases, it becomes extremely important to assess the health of the baby especially when the baby was born with complicated pregnancy or when the birth of the baby is earlier than expected and therefore, the baby is premature. Such babies’ health is dubious and therefore, feel the need to examine such babies more carefully so that they can tell parents whether their baby is healthy or not.

How APGAR score helps doctors?

This scoring chart lets the doctor figure out the long-term health condition of the newborn. Several types of health conditions in the newborn are revealed at the time of birth due to the use of the APGAR scoring chart. This chart also enables doctors to help parents deal with the problems of the baby.

This way, doctors can help new parents take care of their newborn so that he can be grown in a completely appropriate environment. Doctors can also confirm if their evaluation during the pregnancy was accurate or not.

Things to remember:

There are some important points about the APGAR scoring chart that everyone should keep in mind. Some of them are:

  1. The APGAR chart should be used right after birth because it is used to get an immediate health review. Many other tests are very time taking and the APGAR test is the one designed to be used two or five minutes after the baby’s birth.
  2. It is used only when the initial report is to be made. To know about complex health problems, an APGAR scoring chart should not be used.
  3. The APGAR scoring chart does not tell whether the baby’s health will be good in the long run or not. This chart only tells the current condition of the baby.

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Newborn APGAR scoring chart

File: Excel (.xls) 2007+ and iPad 
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