Abstract
Five cases of congenital syphilis and twenty-seven intrauterine infections including pneumonia, purulent meningitis, purulent peritonitis, viral meningitis, etc. were collected after histopathological observation. The course of intrauterine infections has changed in recent years.
We presented two routes of intrauterine infection, namely by way of the blood-stream and amniotic fluid. We then recommended further studies of the placental rupture route of infection. There are marked differences between the early and late infections of the fetus. The trans amniotic fluid route is usually a late infection. It is manifested as pneumonia most frequently, but in a few cases pneumonia was caused by blood-stream infections.
We noted that the premature is more susceptible to these infections.
Further studies in these intrauterine infections are required for the cases of malformations, tumors, chromosome anomalies and for unknown diseases in the fetus and newborn.
Our conclusions of the cases as follows: Damage of the thymus was not prominent among the pneumonia cases. On the contrary, the thymus was severely affected in the cases of purulent peritonitis which showed a great decreased in the weight of the gland. The occurence of purulent meningitis was more frequent in males. An increase of the splenic weight was observed in the cases of central nervous system damage. There was no incidence of decreased weight of the adrenal gland in any of our cases.
