Peritonitis in the neonatal period.

It has generally been assumed that peritonitis occurs but rarely in newborn infants. In the 1952 Charles West lecture (Moncrieff, 1953) on infection in newborn babies the condition was not mentioned. Thelander, who wrote a classical paper on perforations of the gastro-intestinal tract in newborn infants in 1939, stated that most paediatricians never saw a case, and in 1949 Low, Cooper and Cosby could only find 100 instances in the literature since 1761, when Morgagni first reported the condition in De Sedibus et Causis Morborum. During the last five years, however, many cases of peritonitis in infants have been described and it has become clear that a condition which was formerly thought to be a pathological curiosity, is in fact a not uncommon cause of disease and death in the neonatal period. The pathology and aetiology are, as yet, little understood and recent publications have caused confusion by the synonymous use of terms, such as meconium peritonitis, intra-uterine peritonitis, foetal peritonitis, and peritonitis in the newborn. This paper is presented in order to describe our experience with neonates suffering from peritonitis, to evaluate the incidence of the disease, and to