Paweł Gałecki
Institutions of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, Poland
Title: Should screening ultrasound of central nervous system and abdomen in infants ≥35th weeks of pregnancy be recommended?
Biography
Biography: Paweł Gałecki
Abstract
Ultra-sonography of newborns, born long before term and newborns with extremely low birth weight or other significant pathology has become a gold standard on the neonatal pathology units and NICU. It is a rather simple method and non-invasive; it does not bring the increased risk to the newborns, and is providing much information about the condition of the patient, the course of disease, the effectiveness of the treatment and further predictions. However, only 10–15% children are born below 35th week of pregnancy and are being hospitalized on the II and III degree of neonatal care units. It will leave the majority of children left without ultrasound diagnostics, because very few centres of first degree of neonatal care are conducting that kind of diagnostics apart from very rigorous recommendations, acknowledging that these children are “from the assumption” healthy. Perhaps, such an assumption is not fully correct and many children from so-called physiologic pregnancy are burdened with certain diseases, which could be to recognize and be possibly healed, if all children were examined. In this paper we have studied ultrasound examinations of the central nervous system and the abdominal cavity carried out on children born after 35th week of pregnancy at the Neonatal Unit of the Hospital in PÅ‚oÅ„sk (first level of neonatal care) from 01.01.2014 to 02.12.2014.