Long-term prognosis of neonatal seizures - where are we?

Effect of age, polymicrobial disease, and maternal HIV status on treatment response and cause of severe pneumonia in South African children: a prospective descriptive study. The burden of childhood tuberculosis and the accuracy of routine surveillance data in a high-burden setting. classification of childhood intra-thoracic tuberculosis. The natural history of childhood intra-thoracic tuberculosis: a critical review of the pre-chemotherapy literature. et al. Tuberculous lymphadenitis as a cause of persistent cervical lymphadenopathy in children from a tuberculosis-endemic area. Neonatal seizures are a relatively common marker of brain dysfunction in the newborn. Population based studies from Western countries(1) suggest a relatively low incidence of 2.6/1000. The incidence in outborn babies admitted to Indian NICUs is close to 12%, and reflects the actual reality in our country where babies are born in small hospitals and nursing homes(2). The recurring question uppermost in both parents and pediatrician's mind is what will be the long term neurological outcome in a baby with neonatal seizures. For many decades, it has been clear that the etiology of neonatal seizures is one factor critical in determining outcome. Newborns with transient correctible metabolic abnormalities, focal ischemia and without clear etiology do well, while those with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), CNS infections and cerebral dysgenesis regularly do poorly(1,3). In India, where perinatal care is uneven, transient metabolic disturbances like hypocalcemia and hypoglycemia still account for about a fifth of the neonatal morbidity(2). Also, the outcome of hypoglycemia is not necessarily