What is brain haemorrhage in pre-term babies?
Babies born more than eight weeks prematurely (at 32 weeks of pregnancy or earlier) face several particular threats to life in their early days. One is brain haemorrhage, or the leaking of blood from the blood vessels inside the skull into the brain tissues or around them. Small bleeds are commonplace in premature babies, occurring in 10 to 15 per cent of such babies – and doctors would expect the majority to resolve with few long term problems. Most haemorrhages occur within 72 hours of birth and up to 50 per cent have no symptoms. But if the bleeding is anything more than minor, the blood may fill the chambers of the brain called the ventricles, which are normally full of cerebrospinal fluid. These more severe ‘intraventricular’ haemorrhages or IVH cause the ventricles to swell inside the brain, putting pressure the brain tissue, and so can lead to long term brain damage.
