Now the anti-vaxxers are going after Vitamin K.
Mid-morning, a nurse calls downstairs to tell us that the mother who will have a C-section at noon is declining the Vitamin K shot for her baby. Although the trend of refusing neonatal Vitamin K feels fresher to me than vaccine refusal, it may just be less publicized. I, like many pediatricians, see an increasing number of refusals.
Jen, my intern, sees me grimace. “We need to go upstairs and talk to her before the birth,” I say. “She’s refusing Vitamin K. Do you want to lead this conversation, or do you want to listen to me?”
“Maybe since it’s the first time, I’ll listen to you,” Jen says.
“OK,” I say. “So let’s go over it first. Why do I care so much that this baby gets Vitamin K?”
“Her blood can’t clot without it,” Jen says.
“Exactly. So the risk of not getting the shot is?”
“Bleeding,” Jen says.
“Brain bleeds and bleeds in the gut are the ones we care about,” I say. “And when might babies who don’t get Vitamin K start bleeding?”
“Um, pretty soon?” Jen says.
“Yup,” I say. Babies are at the highest risk for Vitamin-K Deficiency Bleeding (VKDB) in the first week of life, so the standard of care is to give the shot within an hour after birth. Many parents don’t know that the
risk of VKDB is high in untreated newborns: between one in sixty and one in 250 babies who don’t get the shot will have a clinically significant bleed, like a bleed in the gut that makes them anemic or a brain bleed that affects their neurodevelopment.
A small minority of these bleeds will be devastating hemorrhagic strokes, which may leave previously healthy babies with severe brain injury or, sometimes, kill them. The severe bleeds happen later in life, between two weeks and six months of age. They are unprovoked—there need not have been a car wreck, trauma or abuse. There are usually no warning signs until the bleeding is severe enough to cause pressure on the brain.
The Centers for Disease Control, in an appeal to parents, have published a handful of stories from parents whose babies suffered life-threatening VDKB. “
Judah’s Story” tells of a healthy boy whose parents declined the shot. At five weeks old, Judah began vomiting. At first, his parents thought he had stomach flu, but by evening he had become lethargic. His folks were getting ready to take him to the ER when he started having seizures. Within hours, the baby was having emergency brain surgery and on his way to a pediatric ICU. ...
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/...ter&utm_term=Among the Vitamin K Anti-Vaxxers