The Apgar score was designed to quickly evaluate a newborn's physical condition after delivery. The Apgar test is usually given to a baby twice: once at 1 minute after birth, and again at 5 minutes after birth. Five factors are used to evaluate the baby's condition and each factor is scored on a scale of 0 to 2:
- Activity and muscle tone
- Pulse (heart rate)
- Grimace response (medically known as "reflex irritability")
- Appearance (skin coloration)
- Respiration (breathing rate and effort)
A value of 0 indicates death; the highest possible score is 10.
Apgar scores are retained as reported by the data source for records that indicate a hospital birth. A hospital birth is defined as any diagnosis in the range of V3000 to V3901 with the last two digits of "00" or "01" and the patient is not transferred from another acute care hospital or health care facility. Values outside the range of 0 to 10 are set to invalid (.A). The Apgar score is set to missing (.) on non-birth records.
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