Relationship between Ultrasonographic Brain Findings and Outcomes of Perinatal Asphyxia

Introduction: Perinatal asphyxia is one of the most common causes of neonatal morbidity and mortality in most countries of the world. Asphyxia (insufficient oxygen supply) can lead to severe hypoxic ischaemic organ damage in newborns followed by a fatal outcome or severe life-long pathologies. Ultrasound (US) has emerged as a powerful screening tool for the evaluation of a neonate with suspected perinatal asphyxia. Therefore, this study aimed to find a relationship between Ultrasonographic brain findings and immediate outcomes of perinatal asphyxia. Methods: This was a prospective analytical study carried out in the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU), Department of Pediatrics, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh from January 2018 to June 2018. In our study, we enrolled 200 newborn babies with perinatal asphyxia based on the selection criteria who were admitted to the special care baby unit within 24 hours. Results: The mean ± SD of age was 5.7±1.1 hours. Cranial sonographic findings show that 36.0% had cerebral oedema, 5.0% intraventricular bleeding, 3.0% showed focal cerebral infarction and 53.0% showed normal findings. Out of 164 patients who recovered from the illness, 98 patients had normal USG findings as opposed to 66 patients with abnormal USG. Among the expired cases, all (100%) had abnormal cranial USG findings. Conclusion: In our study, we found that there was a significant association between abnormal cranial USG findings and the immediate outcome of the asphyxiated newborn. The most common abnormality was cerebral oedema and IVH and it carried the highest mortality.