Better perinatal care has led to better survival of very preterm children, but may or may not have increased the number of children with cerebral and pulmonary morbidity. We therefore investigated the relationship between changes in perinatal care during one decade, and short-term outcome in very preterm infants. Perinatal risk factors and their effects on 28-day and in-hospital mortality, and ...

Thirty preterm infants (birthweight under 1500 g) were treated with phenobarbitone to examine its effectiveness in reducing the incidence of intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH), the control group comprising 28 infants. The treated group had 57% incidence of IVH and mortality of 13% compared with 68% and 14%, respectively, in controls.

BACKGROUND Intracranial haemorrhage accounts for 30-60 % of all stroke admissions into a hospital, with hypertension being the main risk factor. Presence of intraventricular haematoma is considered a poor prognostic factor due to the resultant obstruction to CSF and the mass effect following the presence of blood resulting in raised intracranial pressure and hydrocephalus. We report the results...

Seventy three preterm infants weighing less than 1500 g or less than 32 weeks' gestation, or both, were allocated randomly to treatment (fresh frozen plasma 10 ml/kg on admission and at 24 hours of age) or control groups. Fifteen (41%) out of 37 control patients sustained intraventricular haemorrhage compared with five (14%) of 36 patients receiving treatment (X2 = 5.24, P = 0.022). No differen...

Prevention of intraventricular haemorrhage in preterm infants in Britain and Ireland EDITOR,-Intraventricular or periventricular haemorrhage is a potential cause of morbidity and mortality in preterm infants. Many potential treatments have been studied but three in particular have influenced practice in the British Isles: vitamin El; ethamsylate2; and fresh frozen plasma.3 Meta-analysis has sho...

AIMS To investigate the relation between cerebral blood flow on the first day of postnatal life and the severity of any subsequent germinal matrix haemorrhage-intraventricular haemorrhage (GMH-IVH). METHODS Cerebral blood flow was measured in 24 babies during the first 24 hours of life using near infrared spectroscopy. Repeated cerebral ultrasound examination was performed to define the maxim...

The hospital charts and CT scans of 112 patients with spontaneous supratentorial haemorrhage were retrospectively reviewed to evaluate factors important to prognosis. A low Glasgow Coma Scale score, coma, ataxic respiration, abnormal pupils, acute hypertension, large haemorrhage size and intraventricular extension of blood were associated with a poor outcome. Multivariate analysis using the tec...

This case report describes the occurrence of intraventricular haemorrhage in a teenage boy, who was later found to have neurofibromatosis-1, cerebral vascular disease and pectus excavatum.