The effect of neonatal bloodletting in the treatment of neonatal jaundice: a review article

Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia occurs in 60-80% newborns in the first few days of birth, in most cases, jaundice is physiologic and usually improves without treatment. Bloodletting is the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease. Recently the Bloodletting is one of the common treatments for neonatal jaundice. In this review study, we have evaluated medical articles and narrative books (hadiths) for the application of this method in neonatal jaundice. In this systematic review we evaluated PubMed databases, Cochrane, Google Scholar, collaboration library, SID, Magiran, and narrative books (hadiths) with the subject of cupping and Bloodletting were included in the study 1983 and September 2019. In this study, all of articles with the title “Bloodletting“, "cupping" and “Wet cupping”, “Dry cupping”, “Air trapping”, “Scarification”, “Hejamat”, “ear cupping” and the abstracts of the articles presented in the conferences were studied. Then, in the evaluation stage of the articles, all the studies unrelated to the issue were excluded from the research. Also, in this study, all Shia and Sunni hadith sources and the Holy Qur'an were evaluated. The evaluation of hadiths was carried out by Jama Al-Ahadith software, which is a collection of Shia and Sunni hadith books. We assessed 1120 articles related to Bloodletting, none of which were related to neonatal jaundice and Bloodletting. Cupping is a therapeutic method that dates back thousands of years. Bloodletting by scarification was an accepted practice in Ancient Egypt. In Greece, bloodletting was in use in the 5th century BC. "Bleeding" a patient to health was modeled on the process of menstruation. During the Roman Empire, the Greek physician Galen, who subscribed to the teachings of Hippocrates, advocated physician-initiated bloodletting. The popularity of bloodletting was reinforced by the ideas of Galen. In our study in Shiite and Sunni narrations, only two narrations recommended infant Bloodletting after four months just for prevention. According to our finding there is no article or narration that recommended Bloodletting for neonatal jaundice.