Neonatal Brain Injury: An Overview

By studying the incidence and the severity of these injuries, researchers can pinpoint problem areas and suggest further research or measures to counter such issues. A thorough analysis on the topic was presented in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004.

According to researchers,l approximately 95 percent of the children who have a stroke as a result of brain injury and who survive will experience some sort of cognitive disability into adulthood.

Thus, birth brain injuries are considered a medical problem that can have a profound impact on the families, societies and the medical care system.

The analysis also suggests that the belief that most such injuries occurred at birth are uniform is wrong. Defects in inherent metabolic pathways are currently being established as one among several common reasons for birth brain injuries.

Advanced methods of neuroimaging are giving researchers more information and also making it possible to predict the outcome following brain injuries. The importance of MRI scans, for example, has been established through multiple clinical trials that have occurred over the past several decades.

Common Treatments and Promising New Therapies

While a lot of the research focuses on the diagnostic process and the accurate prediction of the outcome, medics are also working hard on discovering effective treatment options.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has established itself as one of the possibilities for the effective treatment of newborns. In some instances, oxygen therapy has even been used to reverse the damage sustained by babies and children.

One study on the topic was presented in Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology in 2005. The experiment suggests that this type of therapy can be used to reduce neuroinflammation and secondary cell death.

A prominent study was presented in the Journal of Neurosurgery back in 1992. Medics worked with 168 patients who had head trauma and who either underwent hyperbaric oxygen therapy for the brain injury or they received a standard treatment as a part of the control group.

The entire group had a follow-up, 12 months after treatment completion.

The mortality rate among all patients in the therapy group was 17 percent. In comparison, the control group mortality rate was 32 percent. One thing that the hyperbaric oxygen therapy didn’t affect was guaranteeing the good recovery of patients who survived.

This is just one among many treatment possibilities. Hypothermia is another approach that’s been studied thoroughly, and that proves to be promising.

While the diagnostic process and treatment are two important fields as far as innovation and research go in terms of brain injury, there are various other areas changing all the time. Advocacy and guaranteeing accessibility to children and babies who have sustained an injury are two such prominent areas.