ABSTRACT
The occurrence of jaundice (bilirubin) in newborn babies can lead to serious mental deficiencies in the baby. The established procedure for diagnosing bilirubin is by extracting and analysing a blood sample from a baby (invasive blood sampling). A possible alternative to such invasive blood sampling is the use of transcutaneous bilirubinometry, which involves optically monitoring the skin tissue to avoid the need for disruptive blood extraction. The first transcutaneous bilirubinometer was introduced in 1980 (Yamamanouchi et al., 1980). Since then, several other devices have been developed, and important adjustments (such as the correction for the presence of other skin chromophores [e.g., melanin, haemoglobin]) have been made to improve their accuracy. These second-generation bilirubinometers are suitable for the screening of hyperbilirubinaemia, leading to a considerable decrease of the number of hospital re-admissions. However, after more than 30 years of development, no transcutaneous bilirubinometer has proven itself a worthy replacement for invasive blood sampling. Reasons for this limited clinical value are diverse (e.g., the technological design of the bilirubinometers, the method of clinical evaluation and variations between patients) but have not been investigated thoroughly in the literature.
