Severe brain haemorrhages an uncommon complication for babies

The prognosis for Jennifer Jane Brown looked poor when her condition continued deteriorating 24 hours after she had a brain haemorrhage.

Internal bleeding in the brain is a common complication among premature babies although the haemorrhaging is often mild and the condition can resolve itself without causing long-term damage.

Severe haemorrhages, however, can result in permanent disabilities, including blindness, deafness, hydrocephalus or cerebral palsy, or even death.

The brains of premature babies are fed by a rich network of fragile blood vessels. If these haemorrhage, blood seeps into the fluid-filled ventricles. Known as intraventricular haemorrhaging (IVH), there are often no outward signs of bleeding and the problem is discovered during routine ultrasound scans.

Specialists say severe haemorrhaging is unusual in babies born at 33 weeks, such as Jennifer, and the condition proves fatal in less than 10 per cent of infants at that age. But it is now clear that Jennifer suffered severe bleeding that caused extensive brain damage.

Dr Quen Mok, a paediatric and neo-natal intensivist at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, London, said as many as half of babies born after 28 weeks' gestation suffer bleeding in the brain. For those born at 28 to 34 weeksthe incidence drops to between 20 and 30 per cent.

Dr Mok added: "We usually see this kind of bleeding in patients who are very unwell and on a ventilator. Serious bleeding normally occurs in babies who have had blood pressure problems or lung disease."

Janesh Gupta, a consultant obstetrician at Birmingham Women's Hospital, said: "In most cases the condition resolves spontaneously and the prognosis is good, although you may not know what the neurological consequences are until the child reaches between two and five years. The prognosis is much better than it would have been 20, even 10 years ago because everything has become so well-established in terms of neo-natal care."