The “Antiquated” Apgar Score

First published in 1952, the Apgar Score has remained unchanged over 70 years and is entrenched in current OB/Pediatric/Neonatal care. The ACOG highlighted the Apgar Score in 2015 in CO 644. In that release, the ACOG reminds us that although it provides an accepted and convenient method for reporting the status of the newborn infant immediately after birth and the response to resuscitation if needed, it has important limitations: A. The healthy preterm infant with no evidence of asphyxia may receive a low score only because of immaturity, B. The incidence of low Apgar scores is inversely related to birth weight, and C. a low score cannot predict morbidity or mortality for any individual infant. Most importantly, it is inappropriate to use an Apgar score alone to diagnose asphyxia. It has been previously shown that not all items of the conventional Apgar score are of equal importance. However, Virginia Apgar did not differentially weigh or remove individual items since it was her intention to have a score that can be “determined easily and without interfering with the care of the infant”. Accordingly, use of the score has been found to have important use limitations across babies whose skin color has more pigmentation, leading to more NICU admissions in some despite other more objective measures of neonatal status. As the United States and many other countries have become more racially and ethnically diverse, embedding skin color scoring into basic data and decisions of health care may propagate unintentional race-based medicine. In this episode we will discuss the data leading some to call the traditional Apgar score “antiquated” and are calling for a change.

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