Baby girl found suffering from cyanosis

Doctors at a private hospital have come across a case in which a 23-day-old baby had abnormally turned blue after she was put on packaged formula milk mixed with underground borewell water.
The medical condition is known as cyanosis - a bluish colour to the skin or mucus membranes that is usually due to a lack of oxygen in the blood.
The entire body of the baby girl turned blue as the water used with packaged milk contained high amount of nitrate, which caused changes in the Hemoglobin of the blood and changed it into Methemoglobin, doctors treating the baby at Department of Neonatology of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said.

The baby's parents are from Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh.
Contrary to Hemoglobin, which is responsible to deliver oxygen to all parts of the body through blood, Methemoglobin is a compound having poor oxygen carrying capacity. Its higher concentration in the body leads to poor oxygen supply and cyanosis eventually.
In this case, medical tests showed Methemoglobin level at 67 per cent against a normal of less than one per cent. If the levels of Methemoglobin is more than 80 per cent then the chances of survival is very slim, the doctors said.

"Since the baby was neither suffering from any congenital hear diseases nor her mother was taking any medicine that could have caused cyanosis in the baby, we suspected that water they are using with packaged milk might have been contaminated with nitrate content.

"We found that nitrate content was higher than permissible limit and causing cyanosis (turning blue)," said Dr Satish Saluja, Vice-President, Department of Neonatology of the hospital.
"Analyses of the borewell water used by the villagers revealed 27 parts per million (ppm) of Nitrate level against a normal level of less than 10 ppm," he said.
Dr Saluja said that what put the case in the "unusual" category is the fact that cyanosis usually occurs in patients suffering from congenital heart disease, which leads to mixing of pure and impure blood and causes cyanosis.
"However, all the tests conducted on the baby revealed that she was not suffering from any kind heart ailment," he said.

He said the finding of such a case has highlighted the need to monitor the level of harmful compounds in the groundwater, in the country.