2 puncture wounds at base of neck where brain and spinal cord was sucked out

In the delivery room, the Apgar score is an effective indicator of the infant's progress in adapting to extrauterine life (Table 1). American Academy of Pediatrics and American Heart Association, Appendix 2006) (Adapted from Neonatal Resuscitation Textbook, 5th edn. Below is an algorithm for neonatal resuscitation. Most causes involve asphyxia or respiratory depression. This number increases as birth weight decreases. In this context, frequent comparison to significant pathologic findings is unavoidable.Īpproximately 8–12% of neonates require some degree of resuscitation at delivery. The list of such normal variations is long the discussion in this chapter is largely concerned with this type of physical finding. Specific examples are parental anxieties over cephalhematoma, small anterior fontanel during the first day of life, erythema toxicum, physiologic jaundice, caput succedaneum, genital edema, or hydrocele. Some unimportant variants may impress parents dramatically, and these findings must be identified as insignificant, transient, or normal variants. If neither is found, the next consideration is to evaluate for the variant and minor abnormalities that are often discerned in otherwise normal infants.

Immediately after birth, the obstetrician needs to ascertain, from a brief assessment of the infant, whether there is illness or malformation. Today's normal signs may be tomorrow's abnormalities. One additional facet of global assessment is the relation of physical findings to the time of their occurrence. Assessment also requires understanding of the aftermath of intrauterine and parturitional experience, and it further requires comprehension of the phenomena of extrauterine adaptation (particularly cardiovascular and respiratory) and the impact of the environment of the infant (particularly thermal factors).

What happened before the infant was actually seen? The historic considerations concern familial predispositions to disease states, maternal status, the course of pregnancy, and the nature of labor and delivery. Circumspect assessment of a neonate is no different from that of older patients: it must first consider an informative history.

2 puncture wounds at base of neck where brain and spinal cord was sucked out