Chris Mulford cites some of Kyllike Christensson et al's beautiful work
showing the function of skin to skin contact after human birth, and asks
whether I or someone else can convert the glucose results reported in
mmol/L, to mg/dl, which is the traditional method.  Millimoles per liter is
the International System of Units unit.  Both these units are metric but the
chemical basis for what is measured is different.
I got hold of a little spiral bound book about 15 years ago, put out by NEJM
Books of Boston, called SI unit Conversion Guide, ISBN 0 910133 38 7, by
Michael Laposata, then associate professor of pathology at Harvard.  It has
the conversion factors and nomograms for all such conversions and fits in a
pocket.  I only use it when participating on fora such as this one, where
there are a lot of people still using traditional units rather than the
internationally adopted ones.
The conversion factor for going from mmol/L to mg/dl is 18.01.  You multiply
the SI unit to get the traditional one.  To go the other way around, you
multiply by 0.05551.  
Both the glucose values were acceptable according to every guideline I know
of in Norway for newborns.  The babies kept skin to skin had glucose values
averaging 3.17, which is nearly 57.1 in traditional units, and the cot
babies had 2.56, which is 46.1 in traditional units.  Our cutoff for
watching and waiting in term babies is 2.0 in the first 24 hours, after
which it goes up to 2.5.  We do not routinely measure blood glucose, only if
there has been something to arouse suspicion or increased watchfulness.
The conversion factor for bilirubin can be useful too, so I'm including it.
If you want to convert from our SI units, which again are mmol/L, to US
units, which are mg/dL, you multiply by 0.0585.  If you want to go from
mg/dL to mmol/L you multiply by 17.1.  So I always have to remind myself
that the US is not insane for being afraid of bilirubins of 20, I just have
to convert that to the units we use, when it becomes nearly 350.

The conversion factors are different for each thing you measure because they
are dependent on the molecular weight of the substance in question.  That's
why you need a whole book about it.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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