Improved reproducibility of MRS regional brain thermometry by 'amplitude-weighted combination'.

Brain temperature is important in stroke and trauma. In birth asphyxia, hypothermia improves outcome, but local brain temperature information is needed to optimise therapy. The proton MRS water chemical shift (δ(water) ) is temperature dependent, and the in vivo brain temperature has often been estimated by measuring δ(water) relative to the N-acetylaspartate (NAA) singlet methyl resonance.

Proton MR spectroscopy in neonates with perinatal cerebral hypoxic-ischemic injury: metabolite peak-area ratios, relaxation times, and absolute concentrations.

Background: Results from cerebral proton (1)H-MR spectroscopy studies of neonates with perinatal hypoxic-ischemic injury have generally been presented as metabolite peak-area ratios, which are T1- and T2-weighted, rather than absolute metabolite concentrations. We hypothesized that compared with (1)H-MR spectroscopy peak-area ratios, calculation of absolute metabolite concentrations and relaxation times measured within the first 4 days after birth (1) would improve prognostic accuracy and (2) enhance the understanding of underlying neurochemical changes in neonates with neonatal encephalopathy.

Methods: Seventeen term infants with neonatal encephalopathy and 10 healthy controls were studied at 2.

Treatment of term infants with head cooling and mild systemic hypothermia (35.0 degrees C and 34.5 degrees C) after perinatal asphyxia.

Objective: To assess the safety of selective head cooling in birth-asphyxiated term newborn infants while maintaining the rectal temperature at 35.0 degrees C or 34.5 degrees C.

Follow up of a randomised trial of two different courses of dexamethasone for preterm babies at risk of chronic lung disease.

Objectives: To report 18 month outcome of a randomised trial of two courses of dexamethasone to prevent chronic lung disease of prematurity.

Study Design: Babies of birth weight 1250 g or less ventilated at 7 days of age were randomised to a 42 day reducing course (long) or a 3 day pulsed (pulse) course of dexamethasone. Growth, cardiovascular status, and respiratory and neurodevelopmental outcomes were assessed at 18 months.

Twenty-four hours of mild hypothermia in unsedated newborn pigs starting after a severe global hypoxic-ischemic insult is not neuroprotective.

Three to 12 h of mild hypothermia (HT) starting after hypoxia-ischemia is neuroprotective in piglets that are anesthetized during HT. Newborn infants suffering from neonatal encephalopathy often ventilate spontaneously and are not necessarily sedated. We aimed to test whether mild posthypoxic HT lasting 24 h was neuroprotective if the animals were not sedated.