Risk factors and prevention strategies of perinatal brain injury in premature infants

Abstract

Life quality of the premature babies after rescuing successfully was gained more attention by perinatal medical field and society with the more success rate of premature rescue.The brain injury is one of the main factors affecting the long term prognosis of the premature infants.The major risk factors of brain damage include gestational age and birth weight, intrauterine hypoxia and infection, the mode of delivery and whether the resuscitation and later treatment skills proper and skilled, and so on.So the key point of preventing the brain injury is avoiding premature delivery and extending the gestational age as much as possible.If the premature delivery could not evitable, the obstetrician should use adrenal cortex hormones before delivery to promote fetal lungs maturition, since the increasing application of cortical hormone prenatally and decreasing using that after birth have been shown good effects on long term prognosis of the nervous system in the preterm infants.It is also confirmed that application of magnesium sulfate prenatally could prevent the premature brain injury.There are still no agreements on the relationship between the delivery modes and the brain injury of extremely low birth weight infants.But prolonging the stage of labor is sure to increase the incidence of intracranial hemorrhage in the premature infants thereby affecting the long term prognosis.After birth, we should implement the correct resuscitation processes by skilled and proper technical methods, in order to decrease the mortality and to improve the long term prognosis. Key words: Premature infant; Perinatal; Brain injury; Prevention strategies