KEY POINTS 1. Neonatal encephalopathy is an alteration in consciousness or neurologic exam in newborn infants. Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy accounts for nearly 50% of all cases. 2. Clinical presentation depends on the duration, timing, and severity of the insult and may…
KEY POINTS 1. A healthy fetus has considerable aerobic and anaerobic reserves to successfully adapt to transient or mild hypoxia. Prolonged or repeated severe asphyxia results in failure of adaptation and progressive hypotension and hypoperfusion. The severity of brain injury…
KEY POINTS 1. Platelets are anuclear cellular fragments that are released from megakaryocytes and are involved in primary hemostasis. 2. The normal platelet counts in newborn infants have been traditionally defined as 150 to 450 × 10 9 These counts decline…
KEY POINTS 1. Anemia occurs when the red blood cell (RBC) mass is not adequate to meet tissue oxygen needs. 2. Target hemoglobin and hematocrit have been used as clinical indicators for RBC transfusion in preterm infants with acute and…
KEY POINTS 1. Anemia is an abnormal, and an unhealthy, reduction in the blood hemoglobin concentration or the hematocrit. There are limitations in our current definitions of anemia, which are based on “reference intervals” constructed from clinically obtained laboratory tests,…
KEY POINTS 1. We still need a universally accepted definition of severe hyperbilirubinemia; no particular thresholds of unconjugated or total bilirubin levels have been definitively associated with acute or chronic bilirubin encephalopathy. 2. Several measurements can be useful for the…
KEY POINTS 1. Shock is a clinical condition marked by poor tissue perfusion resulting in inadequate oxygen delivery and tissue hypoxia. 2. Neonates with shock have hypotension or poor tissue perfusion, and there are important surrogate markers such as prolonged…
KEY POINTS 1. Pulmonary hypertension (PH) in young infants is defined as a resting mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) ≥20 mm Hg. 2. The mPAP at birth resembles the systemic blood pressure and then drops to infrasystemic levels over the…
KEY POINTS 1. The normal cardiac electrical signal travels from the atria to the ventricles through a conduction system comprised of the sinus node, atrioventricular (AV) node, His bundle, and Purkinje system. 2. The AV node normally regulates the electrical…
KEY POINTS 1. The natural history of congenital heart diseases (CHDs) varies tremendously. Some critical CHDs become symptomatic and require therapeutic intervention in the neonatal period. 2. Patients with CHDs that result in inadequate pulmonary blood flow typically demonstrate cyanosis…