Intraventricular hemorrhage in extremely low birth weight infant: a case report

  • Alexander S. Chepelev St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University
  • Olga L. Krasnogorskaya St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University
  • Elena P. Fedotova St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University
  • Veronika A. Galichina St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University
  • Moisey B. Paneiakh St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University
  • Nadezhda A. Sidorova St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University
  • Ruslan A. Nasyrov St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem of intraventricular hemorrhage in preterm infants with low and extremely low body weight. Premature newborns are most susceptible to this pathology due to the morpho-functional immaturity of brain tissues and blood vessels. Pathological factors lead to lesion of the vessel wall and a massive hemorrhage in the cavity of the ventricles, sometimes with a breakthrough into the white matter. The morphological findings of hemorrhage in the lateral ventricles of the brain in a child born with extremely low body weight are presented on an example of a clinical case. The article presents a description of the morphology of damage to the germinal matrix and choroid plexus as one of the most common sources of hemorrhage. The main attention is paid to the state of the blood vessels: arterioles, venules, capillaries. Possible causes and consequences of vascular injury in the periventricular region are indicated here. According to the recent studies, intraventricular hemorrhage appears more often due to damage to the choroid plexus in children born at 37 weeks of gestation and later. In this report we consider the problem of hemorrhage from the reducing germinal matrix’s vessels into the subependymal region with spreading into the white matter and lateral ventricles.