What score would a newborn receive on the Apgar scale if their heart rate is 80 beats/min and they have slow, irregular breathing?

The Apgar scale assesses a newborn's health immediately after birth, evaluating five criteria: appearance (skin color), pulse (heart rate), grimace response (reflexes), activity (muscle tone), and respiration. Each criterion is scored from 0 to 2, with a maximum total score of 10.

In this scenario, the newborn has a heart rate of 80 beats per minute. On the Apgar scale, a heart rate of less than 60 beats per minute scores 0, a heart rate between 60 and 100 beats per minute scores 1, and a heart rate greater than 100 beats per minute scores 2. Therefore, for a heart rate of 80, the score would be 1.

The newborn also has slow, irregular breathing. For respiration under the Apgar criteria, normal breathing earns a score of 2, weak or irregular breathing scores a 1, and absent breathing scores a 0. Slow, irregular breathing would be assessed as weak, thus earning a score of 1.

When combining these individual scores, we have:

• Heart rate: 1

• Respiration: 1

Adding these scores together gives a total score of 2 from just the heart rate