[Vascular and infectious enteropathy in newborn infants. Reflections on pathogeny; clinical and therapeutic deductions. Apropos of 45 cases].

Necrotizing enterocolitis of the new-born has an anatomical definition: lesions discovered during surgery or on post-mortem examination. Progress in neanatal shock reveals facts already known in the adult and in experimental medicine: concept of preferential and circulatory by-pass. A considerable decrease in blood flow is seen in the latter during shock; this shock is sometimes not important. Mesenteric circulation is the best example. This syndrome should therefore be included in the major vascular changes of neonatal period. Vascular and infectious enteropathy is a broader term which seems more appropriate because of aetiological and therapeutic implications. The aetiology should be considered as a sum of several factors varying from one patient to another (multifactorial disease). The circulatory component remains very important. Its severity depends on whether or not it is treated. Four notions should be defined: -- Census of population of subjects with "high risk" of vascular and infectious enteropathy (score trial); -- Isolation of clinical pictures corresponding to a medical or surgical stage; Grouping of elements for immediate and long term prognosis; -- Grouping of elements for immediate and long term prognosis; -- Proposal of preventive treatment to the "high risk" patients (surgery; continuons parenteral and enteral feeding are intientionally left out in this paper). The interest of this concept of the disease is to eradicate severe forms as in the neonatal idiopathic respiratory distress syndrome where a similar concept was adopted.