CT diagnosis and short-term prognosis of intracranial hemorrhage and hypoxic/ischemic brain damage in neonates.

A group of 476 neonates who had suffered perinatal asphyxia were studied with computed tomography (CT), and 341 were found to have some form of intracranial hemorrhage. The different hemorrhages were identified and classified. While the presence and severity of intraventricular hemorrhage in the premature neonate clearly increase neonatal mortality, subependymal and subarachnoid hemorrhages seem to have very little influence on whether the neonate survives or succumbs. Decreased brain tissue attenuation seen to some extent in all premature neonates depends on the maturity of the neonate and thus probably represents the normal appearance of the immature brain on CT. It should be noted that essentially all the CT examinations included in this study were carried out with an Ohio-Nuclear Delta 50 scanner. Findings with newer scanners may or may not corroborate the validity of some aspects of our observations.