Neonatal phototherapy – today’s lights, lamps and devices

Neonatal phototherapy is a widely used and accepted form of treatment for neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia. Effective phototherapy needs to satisfy three important criteria identified in the literature: effective spectrum, sufficiently high irradiance and large effective treatment area. This article looks at how technology for delivering light therapy varies, considers the safety aspects and compares the devices available and in use in the NHS today, against the identified effective criteria.