Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Intrapartum hypoxic ischaemic insult remains an important cause of perinatally acquired brain injury in full term neonates. The risk of death or severe neurological impairment following hypoxia–ischaemia is 0.5–1.0/1000 live births in the UK (≈750 neonates/year).1 It is routine practice to commence antibiotics in these neonates pending blood culture results. However, the duration of antibiotic therapy in those neonates with negative blood cultures, is frequently based on C-reactive protein values, which are considered a marker for neonatal sepsis. However, it is not known if C-reactive protein is elevated in some of these neonates due to the hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathic process and therefore these neonates might receive a longer duration of antibiotics …
Footnotes
-
Contributors SR, RN and CL: all three authors contributed and fulfilled the ICMJE authorship criteria, but the majority of the work was carried out by SR.
-
Competing interests None.
-
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
-
Data sharing statement We are happy to share the data published in this study; no other data are available.