Monitoring of cerebral function after severe asphyxia in infancy.

Thirty nine infants with severe asphyxia (28 affected perinatally and 11 later) were studied by electrophysiological cerebral function monitoring (CFM) for periods varying from a half to 49 days. Nineteen infants died while still in intensive care and two died later from sequelae. Eighteen survived and were followed up when aged between 8 and 36 months. The initial electroencephalogram (EEG) and the first 12 hours of CFM tracing correlated well. The type of background activity, whether continuous or interrupted, proved to be of high prognostic importance unlike the presence of seizure activity, which bore no distinct correlation to outcome in these severely asphyxiated infants.