Question

The nurse assesses an infant born by vaginal delivery. At birth, the infant is crying and moving all extremities, and respirations and pulse rate are good. One minute after birth, the baby is noted to have slightly cyanotic extremities. At five minutes after birth, the extremities are pink. What is the APGAR score for the baby at one minute and five minutes?

a) 9, 10
b) 8, 9
c) 7, 8
d) 10, 10

Answer 1

The APGAR score for the baby at one minute would be 9, considering the slightly cyanotic extremities, and at five minutes, the score would be 10 as the extremities are pink. Both scores are within the normal range, indicating a healthy newborn.

Step-by-step explanation:

The APGAR score is a method to assess the wellbeing of a newborn. It stands for Appearance (skin color), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflex), Activity (muscle tone), and Respiration. In this case, since the baby was crying and moving all extremities with good respirations and pulse rate at birth, the scores respectively for skin color, pulse, reflex, muscle tone, and respiration would all likely be 2, with the exception of skin color, which would be 1 at one minute due to slightly cyanotic extremities. This gives us an APGAR score of 9 at one minute. At five minutes, the baby has pink extremities, indicating a score of 2 for appearance, thus leading to an APGAR score of 10.

Scores of 8 or above are considered normal for the Apgar scale, so this baby's scores indicate that she has made a good transition from the womb.