Retrospective analysis of neurological findings in esophageal atresia: Allostatic load of disease complexity, cumulative sedation, and anesthesia exposure.

Background: There is limited knowledge regarding the impact of perioperative critical care on frequency of neurological imaging findings following esophageal atresia (EA) repair.

Methods: This is a retrospective study of infants (n = 70) following EA repair at a single institution (2009-2020). Sex, gestational age at birth, type of surgical repair, underlying disease severity, and frequency of neurologic imaging findings were obtained.

Infant Perioperative Risk Factors and Adverse Brain Findings Following Long-Gap Esophageal Atresia Repair.

Recent findings implicate brain vulnerability following long-gap esophageal atresia (LGEA) repair. We explored the relationship between easily quantifiable clinical measures and previously reported brain findings in a pilot cohort of infants following LGEA repair. MRI measures (number of qualitative brain findings; normalized brain and corpus callosum volumes) were previously reported in term-born and early-to-late premature infants (n = 13/group) <1 year following LGEA repair with the Foker process.

Impact of Infant Thoracic Non-cardiac Perioperative Critical Care on Homotopic-Like Corpus Callosum and Forebrain Sub-regional Volumes.

Previously, we reported quantitatively smaller total corpus callosum (CC) and total forebrain size in critically ill term-born and premature patients following complex perioperative critical care for long-gap esophageal atresia (LGEA) that included Foker process repair. We extended our cross-sectional pilot study to determine sub-regional volumes of CC and forebrain using structural brain MRI. Our objective was to evaluate region-specific CC as an marker for decreased myelination and/or cortical neural loss of homotopic-like sub-regions of the forebrain.