From "apparent death" to "birth asphyxia": a history of blame

Aspects on Oxygenation in Preterm Infants before, Immediately after Birth, and Beyond

BACKGROUND

Oxygen is crucial for life but too little (hypoxia) or too much (hyperoxia) may be fatal or cause lifelong morbidity.

SUMMARY

In this review, we discuss the challenges of balancing oxygen control in preterm infants during fetal development, the first few minutes after birth, in the neonatal intensive care unit and after hospital discharge, where intensive care monitoring and response to dangerous oxygen levels is more often than not, out of reach with current technologies and services.

KEY MESSAGES

Appropriate oxygenation is critically important even from before birth, but at no time is the need to strike a balance more important than during the first few minutes after birth, when body physiology is changing at its most rapid pace. Preterm infants, in particular, have a poor control of oxygen balance. Underdeveloped organs, especially of the lungs, require supplemental oxygen to prevent hypoxia. However, they are also at risk of hyperoxia due to immature antioxidant defenses. Existing evidence demonstrate considerable challenges that need to be overcome before we can ensure safe treatment of preterm infants with one of the most commonly used drugs in newborn care, oxygen.

Additive interaction between birth asphyxia and febrile seizures on autism spectrum disorder: a population-based study

BACKGROUND

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder that can significantly impact an individual's ability to socially integrate and adapt. It's crucial to identify key factors associated with ASD. Recent studies link both birth asphyxia (BA) and febrile seizures (FS) separately to higher ASD prevalence. However, investigations into the interplay of BA and FS and its relationship with ASD are yet to be conducted. The present study mainly focuses on exploring the interactive effect between BA and FS in the context of ASD.

METHODS

Utilizing a multi-stage stratified cluster sampling, we initially recruited 84,934 Shanghai children aged 3-12 years old from June 2014 to June 2015, ultimately including 74,251 post-exclusion criteria. A logistic regression model was conducted to estimate the interaction effect after controlling for pertinent covariates. The attributable proportion (AP), the relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI), the synergy index (SI), and multiplicative-scale interaction were computed to determine the interaction effect.

RESULTS

Among a total of 74,251 children, 192 (0.26%) were diagnosed with ASD. The adjusted odds ratio for ASD in children with BA alone was 3.82 (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.42-6.02), for FS alone 3.06 (95%CI 1.48-6.31), and for comorbid BA and FS 21.18 (95%CI 9.10-49.30), versus children without BA or FS. The additive interaction between BA and FS showed statistical significance (P < 0.001), whereas the multiplicative interaction was statistically insignificant (P > 0.05).

LIMITATIONS

This study can only demonstrate the relationship between the interaction of BA and FS with ASD but cannot prove causation. Animal brain experimentation is necessary to unravel its neural mechanisms. A larger sample size, ongoing monitoring, and detailed FS classification are needed for confirming BA-FS interaction in ASD.

CONCLUSION

In this extensive cross-sectional study, both BA and FS were significantly linked to ASD. The coexistence of these factors was associated with an additive increase in ASD prevalence, surpassing the cumulative risk of each individual factor.

Comparative study of neonatal brain injury fetuses using machine learning methods for perinatal data

OBJECTIVE

CTG is used to record the fetus's fetal heart rate and uterine contraction signal during pregnancy. The prenatal fetal intrauterine monitoring level can be used to evaluate the fetal intrauterine safety status and reduce the morbidity and mortality of the perinatal fetus. Perinatal asphyxia is the leading cause of neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and one of the leading causes of neonatal death and disability. Severe asphyxia can cause brain and permanent nervous system damage and leave different degrees of nervous system sequelae.

METHODS

This paper evaluates the classification performance of several machine learning methods on CTG and provides the auxiliary ability of clinical judgment of doctors. This paper uses the data set on the public database UCI, with 2126 samples.

RESULTS

The accuracy of each model exceeds 80%, of which XGBoost has the highest accuracy of 91%. Other models are Random tree (90%), light (90%), Decision tree (83%), and KNN (81%). The performance of the model in other indicators is XGBoost (precision: 90%, recall: 93%, F1 score: 90%), Random tree (precision: 88%, recall: 91%, F1 score: 89%), lightGBM (precision: 87%, recall: 93%, F1 score: 90%), Decision tree (precision: 83%, recall: 86%, F1 score: 84%), KNN (precision: 77%, recall: 85%, F1 score: 81%).

CONCLUSION

The performance of XGBoost is the best of all models. This result also shows that using the machine learning method to evaluate the fetus's health status in CTG data is feasible. This will also provide and assist doctors with an objective assessment to assist in clinical diagnosis.

Perinatal asphyxia from the obstetric standpoint

Perinatal asphyxia remains one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality for term newborns. Though access to health care and birth attendants have decreased the rate, Neonatal encephalopathy (NE) has not been eliminated. Worldwide, women at socioeconomic disadvantage have the highest risk of delivering a neonate with NE. Neonates that will experience perinatal asphyxia cannot be easily identified prospectively and the intrapartum testing available is not specific enough to clearly indicate the best course of action in most cases. Despite this, training programs that aim to decrease morbidity and mortality from all causes appear to be associated with fewer cases of perinatal asphyxia. The current best approach is to support education and communication for all people involved in the care of birthing women. Ideally, new technology will address identification of the fetus likely to be affected or the fetus who is beginning to experience injury in advance of delivery.

Meningitis, urinary tract, and bloodstream infections in very low birth weight infants enrolled in a heart rate characteristics monitoring trial

BACKGROUND

Displaying heart rate characteristic (HRC) scores was associated with lower sepsis-associated mortality in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants in a multicenter randomized controlled trial (HeRO trial). The aim of this study was to test whether HRC indices rise before diagnosis of urinary tract infection (UTI) or meningitis, with and without concomitant BSI.

METHODS

Blood, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) culture data after 3 days of age and within 120 days of study enrollment were analyzed from 2989 VLBW infants. The HRC index was analyzed 12 h prior to positive cultures compared to 36 h prior, using paired signed-rank tests.

RESULTS

UTI, meningitis, and BSI were diagnosed in 10%, 2%, and 24% of infants, respectively. The mean hourly HRC index was significantly higher 12 h prior to diagnosis of UTI and BSI compared to 36 h prior (UTI 2.07 versus 1.81; BSI 2.62 versus 2.25, both p < 0.0001). The baseline HRC index was higher for meningitis, compared to UTI or BSI, but without a statistically significant rise in the day prior to meningitis diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS

In a large cohort of VLBW infants enrolled in the HeRO trial, the HRC index increased in the 24-h period prior to diagnosis of UTI and BSI but not meningitis.

Oxygen for respiratory support of moderate and late preterm and term infants at birth: Is air best?

Oxygen has been used for newborn infant resuscitation for more than two centuries. In the last two decades, concerns about oxidative stress and injury have changed this practice. Air (FiO₂ 0.21) is now preferred as the starting point for respiratory support of infants 34 weeks gestation and above. These recommendations are derived from studies that were conducted on asphyxiated, term infants, recruited more than 10 years ago using strategies that are not commonly used today. The applicability of these recommendations to current practice, is uncertain. In addition, whether initiating respiratory support with air for infants with pulmonary disorders provides sufficient oxygenation is also unclear. This review will address these concerns and provide suggestions for future steps to address knowledge and practice gaps.

A New Approach to Cerebral Palsy Treatment: Discussion of the Effective Components of Umbilical Cord Blood and its Mechanisms of Action

Cerebral palsy (CP) includes a group of persistent non-progressive disorders affecting movement, muscle tone, and/or posture. The total economic loss during the life-span of an individual with CP places a heavy financial burden on such patients and their families worldwide; however, a complete cure is still lacking. Umbilical cord blood (UCB)-based interventions are emerging as a scientifically plausible treatment and possible cure for CP. Stem cells have been used in many experimental CP animal models and achieved good results. Compared with other types of stem cells, those from UCB have advantages in terms of treatment safety and efficacy, ethics, non-neoplastic proliferation, accessibility, ease of preservation, and regulation of immune responses, based on findings in animal models and clinical trials. Currently, the use of UCB-based interventions for CP is limited as the components of UCB are complex and possess different therapeutic mechanisms. These can be categorized by three aspects: homing and neuroregeneration, trophic factor secretion, and neuroprotective effects. Our review summarizes the features of active components of UCB and their therapeutic mechanism of action. This review highlights current research findings and clinical evidence regarding UCB that contribute to treatment suggestions, inform decision-making for therapeutic interventions, and help to direct future research.