When a birth goes wrong, seconds can seem like hours. An umbilical cord gets pinched or a placenta tears from the uterine wall, and what doctors call a "crash" cesarean section results.

From that moment, the clock is ticking on the fate of the baby. Was the oxygen deprivation to the brain during delivery prolonged and severe enough to lead to cerebral palsy or other cognitive disorders? Did doctors resuscitate the infant in time to save precious brain cells?

Outcomes usually aren't known for months, perhaps even years. And for decades, the only treatment neonatologists could provide in those critical first hours after a traumatic birth was "support" for the baby – stabilizing its heart rate and vital signs – and then hope for the best.

Now, though, UC Davis Children's Hospital is among the few medical centers in California to use hypothermia therapy to try to slow the damage that can lead to mental retardation.

Using funds from a voter-approved ballot proposition, UC Davis this month brought online an induced- hypothermia device that, if used on oxygen-deprived newborns within the first six hours after birth, has been shown in studies to reduce disability and death in full-term infants.

"This is the first treatment that treats the underlying problem of brain damage," says Dr. Ian Griffin, a UC Davis neonatologist and associate professor of pediatrics. "The feeling is, whatever happens at the time of birth sets in a process of damage that continues for hours and maybe for days. Up until now, we've had nothing that can intervene with that process."

UC Davis is calling its new treatment – first used in Northern California last year in clinical trials at UC San Francisco's Children's Hospital – "Cool Babies," and that's precisely what happens in a specially designed crib.

For 72 hours, the baby is swaddled in a pad infused with cool water to lower its body temperature to 92 degrees. Then, over a 24-hour period, the body is gradually warmed to normal temperature. The therapy is available only for full-term babies (at least 36 weeks' gestation) with oxygen deprivation.

Researchers believe that cooling of the brain and body preserves brain cells that might die after the oxygen deprivation. Brain damage from lack of oxygen occurs in 1 to 2 of every 1,000 births, according to the National Institutes of Health.

A 2005 NIH-sponsored study published in the New England Journal of Medicine divided infants with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy – oxygen starvation of the brain – into groups receiving induced-hypothermia and standard "supportive" care. When the babies were examined at 18 months, 62 percent of the control group developed a moderate to severe disability, compared with 44 percent of those receiving hypothermia treatment. The hypothermia therapy also reduced deaths among infants without raising the rate of severe disability.

Griffin says three follow-up studies – two in Europe and one in Australia – have supported the initial research and have even shown more encouraging results.

Exactly how hypothermia affects early brain function is not known, Griffin says.

"When you have a brain insult, it branches in every direction," he says. "When (researchers) looked experimentally at hypothermia in animals, every branch and pathway gets slowed down and depressed by hypothermia, and they don't see as much damage."

Initial damage from lack of oxygen is irreversible, Griffin says. But "wave builds upon wave of damage, and we can do something to stem those waves if we can start the process fast enough."

Researchers have determined that a baby needs to start hypothermia treatment within six hours of birth to receive any possible benefit.

"That becomes an issue for a baby born in, for instance, Redding to get all the way to UCSF in time," Griffin says. "You can't land (a helicopter) at UCSF. Even just a few minutes can make a difference. So it's good that we now have the ability to treat them."

So far, Griffin says, side effects to cooling babies' bodies are minor. The infant's heart rate can fall by about 40 beats per minute during induced hypothermia, but blood pressure and profusion remains strong, he says. The main side effect, according to the NIH, is a temporary hardening and drying of the skin where it touches the cooling pads.

Griffin acknowledges that the idea of slightly chilling a newborn may strike some as counterintuitive.

"Neonatologists have always been very concerned with keeping babies warm and keeping heart rate strong," he says. "But it doesn't seem to cause the baby any problem. It just kind of freaks out the people looking after the baby until they get used to it."

Call The Bee's Sam McManis, (916) 321-1145. Read his postings on the "Sacramento Health & Fitness" blog at sacbee.com/blogs.