They died or suffered the other serious long-term consequences mentioned above. What did babies do before we gave the shot? The treatment for the bleeding is vitamin K. Because it’s rare and internal, it’s always easy for the bleeding to go undiagnosed for too long, which probably contributes to the high mortality and long-term effects. About one in five babies who develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding die, and two of every five who survive have long-term brain damage. Late vitamin K deficiency bleeding, occurring when a baby is between 2 and 24 weeks old, affects an estimated 4 to 10 of every 100,000 babies who don’t receive vitamin K at birth. We get about 90% of our vitamin K from diet (mostly leafy green vegetables) and about 10% from bacteria in our intestines. If our vitamin K levels drop too low, though the threshold varies from person to person, we can spontaneously bleed internally. It activates the molecules (clotting factors) that allow our blood to clot. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin that’s actually named after what it does: Koagulation, the German word for coagulation. Much of this information is available is also covered in the book Emily Willingham and I wrote, The Informed Parent: An Evidence-Based Resource for Your Child’s First Four Years, and the study references are available here. The best antidote to fear, misinformation or a general lack of information is knowledge, so let’s review the basics of what vitamin K is, why it’s needed and what it does-and doesn’t-do. The reasons range from faith-based ones to beliefs that it’s “unnatural” to anxiety about pain and possible side effects. Now a new study in the Journal of Medical Ethics explores the reasons that somewhere between 0.5% and 3% of parents decline the shot.
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