Bone Fractures in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.20344/amp.5660Keywords:
Fractures, Bone/epidemiology, Infant, Newborn, Intensive Care Units, Neonatal, Portugal.Abstract
Introduction: Fractures during the neonatal period are rare. Some fractures, especially long bones, may occur during birth. Moreover, neonates hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit have an increased risk of fractures for several reasons.Objective: To evaluate the incidence and characterize fractures in newborns admitted in a tertiary Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Material and Methods: A retrospective analysis of the newborns admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with a diagnosis at discharge of one or more bone fractures from January 1996 to June 2013.
Results: Eighty neonates had one or more fractures. In 76 (95%) infants the fractures were attributed to birth injury. The most common fracture was the clavicle fracture in 60 (79%) neonates, followed by skull fracture in 6 (8%). In two (2.5%) neonates, extremely low birth weight infants, fractures were interpreted as resulting from osteopenia of prematurity. Both had multiple fractures, and one of them with several ribs.
Conclusion: A change in obstetric practices allied to improvement premature neonate’s care contributed to the decreased incidence of fractures in neonatal period. But in premature infants the diagnosis may be underestimated, given the high risk of fracture that these infants present.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
All the articles published in the AMP are open access and comply with the requirements of funding agencies or academic institutions. The AMP is governed by the terms of the Creative Commons ‘Attribution – Non-Commercial Use - (CC-BY-NC)’ license, regarding the use by third parties.
It is the author’s responsibility to obtain approval for the reproduction of figures, tables, etc. from other publications.
Upon acceptance of an article for publication, the authors will be asked to complete the ICMJE “Copyright Liability and Copyright Sharing Statement “(http://www.actamedicaportuguesa.com/info/AMP-NormasPublicacao.pdf) and the “Declaration of Potential Conflicts of Interest” (http:// www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest). An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author to acknowledge receipt of the manuscript.
After publication, the authors are authorised to make their articles available in repositories of their institutions of origin, as long as they always mention where they were published and according to the Creative Commons license.
