Pathological examination of the intracranial complications of low birth weight infants and retros pective clinical examination of the central nervous system damages of prematurely born children were performed.
Intracranial pathologies were found in 133 cases of the 238 autopsied low birth weight infants. Those cases consisted of the intracranial hemorrhage (96cases), kernicterus (7cases), purulent meni ngitis (11cases), non-bacterial meningoencephalitis (2cases), periventricular leukomalacia (45cases) and encephalomalacia (1case). These pathological findings overlapped in a half of the cases.
The incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage, subependymal hemorrhage and hemorrhage in perivent ricular white matter was increased, as birth weight decreased. Periventricular leukomalacia was found very often in the group with birth weights from 1, 001 to 2, 000g. Those pathological changes were recog nized in the periventricular regions of the cerebrum.
In 675 prematurely born children with various brain damages, cerebral palcy (326 cases), epilepsy (124 cases) and mental retardation (103 cases) showed high incidence. These diseases overlapped often in each case.
There was a large percentage of children with cerebral palsy, as birth weight decreased, while convulsion and mental retardation did not reveal such a tendency.
In the group of the children with birth abnormalities and with no perinatal abnormalities, hypertonic type or spastic type of the cerebral palsy was dominant. This tendency was eminent in lower birth weight children. Those two results showed similar features.
Therefore the periventricular pathological changes of the cerebrum in the autopsied newborn cases may correlate to hypertonic type or spastic type of cerebral palsy in the prematurely born children.
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