Pioneering 'cold cap' saves baby from brain damage

Doctors have saved a newborn baby from developing a disability by using a pioneering cooling technique to chill her brain for three days.

Staff at St Michael's hospital in Bristol fitted baby Olivia Templar's head with a cooling cap after she was starved of oxygen for ten minutes during a traumatic birth.

The helmet, designed in the US, was pumped with a coolant to reduce the swelling that occurs when tissue is deprived of oxygen. It is the swelling that causes brain damage.

Professor Marianne Thoresen, a paediatrician at St Michael's, was behind one of the research programmes that led to the development of the cap. She said more than 800 babies across the world have been involved in a 10-year trial of the technique.

St Michael's had tested the cap on 40 babies, and it has worked in most cases.