INTRACRANIAL HEMORRHAGES IN VERY LOW BIRTH WEIGHT INFANTS (VLBW): EPIDEMIOLOGY IN OUR POPULATION

Intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) is a common event, often severe, in the neonatal period of VLBW. To stablish the incidence and local epidemiology, we studied retrospectively the clinical histories and echocardiographies of neonates with birth weight less than 1500g, born between January 1987 and July 1988. From 98 newborns admitted in the ICU, 82(84%) were included in this study. We used the ICH classification of Papile et al. The mortality in the study group was 21.9%. In the table we report the factors with statistical significative association using the X2 and Student “t” test as indicated (control group for these factors were the patients without ICH).