Which method quickly summarizes the health of newborn children?

Virginia Apgar (June 7,1909-August 7,1974) was an American obstetrical anesthesiologist. She was best known as the inventor of the Apgar Score; a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after birth.

Virginia Apgar was at New York -Presbyterian Hospital, where she developed the score in 1952 to quantify the effects of obstetric anesthesia (OA) on babies. OA is a sub-speciality of anesthesiology that provides during childbirth for labor and anesthesia (suppress consciousness) for cesarean deliveries.

The Apgar Score is determined by evaluating the newborn baby on five simple criteria on a scale from zero to two, then summing up the five values thus obtained. The resuling score ranges from zero to 10. The five criteria are Skin colour, Pulse rate, Reflex irritability grimace, Muscle Tone and Respiratory effort.

The test is generally done at 1 and 5 minutes after birth. The scores of 7 and above are generally normal; 4 to 6, fairly low; and 3 and below are generally regarded as critically low and cause for immediate resuscitative efforts. An Apgar score that remains below 3 at later times such as 10,15, or 30 minutes, may indicate longer-term neurological damage, including a small but significant increase in the risk of cerebral palsy.