Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), or fetal growth restriction, refers to poor growth of a fetus while in the womb during pregnancy. IUGR is defined by clinical features of malnutrition and evidence of reduced growth regardless of an infant's birth weight percentile. The causes of IUGR are broad and may involve maternal, fetal, or placental complications.
Perinatal asphyxia is the medical condition resulting from deprivation of oxygen to a newborn infant that lasts long enough during the birth process to cause physical harm, usually to the brain. It is also the inability to establish and sustain adequate or spontaneous respiration upon delivery of the newborn. It remains a serious condition which causes significant mortality and morbidity. It is an emergency condition and requires adequate and quick resuscitation measures. Perinatal asphyxia is also an oxygen deficit from the 28th week of gestation to the first seven days following delivery. It is also an insult to the fetus or newborn due to lack of oxygen or lack of perfusion to various organs and may be associated with a lack of ventilation. In accordance with WHO, perinatal asphyxia is characterised by: profound metabolic acidosis, with a pH less than 7.20 on umbilical cord arterial blood sample, persistence of an APGAR score of 3 at the 5th minute, clinical neurologic sequelae in the immediate neonatal period, or evidence of multiorgan system dysfunction in the immediate neonatal period. Hypoxic damage can occur to most of the infant's organs, but brain damage is of most concern and perhaps the least likely to quickly or completely heal. In more pronounced cases, an infant will survive, but with damage to the brain manifested as either mental, such as developmental delay or intellectual disability, or physical, such as spasticity.
Kenneth Kin Man Kwong is a Hong Kong-born American nuclear physicist. He is a pioneer in human brain imaging. He received his bachelor's degree in Political Science in 1972 from the University of California, Berkeley. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Riverside studying photon-photon collision interactions.
Neonatal encephalopathy (NE), previously known as neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, is defined as a encephalopathy syndrome with signs and symptoms of abnormal neurological function, in the first few days of life in an infant born after 35 weeks of gestation. In this condition there is difficulty initiating and maintaining respirations, a subnormal level of consciousness, and associated depression of tone, reflexes, and possibly seizures. Encephalopathy is a nonspecific response of the brain to injury which may occur via multiple methods, but is commonly caused by birth asphyxia, leading to cerebral hypoxia.
Mild total body hypothermia, induced by cooling a baby to 33-34°C for three days after birth, is nowadays a standardized treatment after moderate to severe hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy in full-term and near to fullterm neonates. It has recently been proven to be the only medical intervention which reduces brain damage, and improves an infant's chance of survival and reduced disability.
Arno Villringer is a Director at the Department of Neurology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany; Director of the Department of Cognitive Neurology at University of Leipzig Medical Center; and Academic Director of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Mind&Brain Institute, Berlin. He holds a full professorship at University of Leipzig and an honorary professorship at Charité, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From July 2022 to June 2025 he is the Chairperson of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society.
Neena Modi is a British physician and Professor of Neonatal medicine at Imperial College London. She is the current president of the UK Medical Women’s Federation, and past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, serving in this role from April 2015 to April 2018. She is one of only four women to ever hold this position.
Peter MacNaughton Dunn, FRCP, FRCOG, FRCPCH was an English paediatrician. Dunn was most notable for introducing into the UK the Gregory box in 1971, that provides Continuous positive airway pressure in the treatment of infant respiratory distress syndrome of the newborn and conducting research into Hip dysplasia and fetal adaptation to extrauterine life. Dunn was also notable for being known for founding the charity association British Association of Perinatal Medicine.
Professor Harold Richard Gamsu FRCP, FRCPCH (1931–2004) was a neonatologist.
James Spence Medal is a medal that was first struck in 1960, six years after the death of the paediatrician James Calvert Spence and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the advancement or clarification of paediatric knowledge and is the highest honour bestowed by The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
Sir Alan Aird Moncrieff, was a British paediatrician and professor emeritus at University of London. He was most notable for developing the first premature-baby unit in 1947. It was Moncrief who recognised and developed the concept of daily parental visits to the ward, which he developed while at Great Ormond Street, well before the need for this became recognised, and with his ward sister, published an article on Hospital Visiting for Children in 1949.
Forrester Cockburn is a British Paediatrician and emeritus professor at the University of Glasgow. Cockburn is most notable for conducting research into fetal/neonatal nutrition and brain biochemistry, inherited metabolic diseases and Pediatric ethics. Cockburn was awarded the prestigious James Spence Medal in 1998.
David Robert Harvey was a British paediatrician and considered by his peers to be a champion of the less privileged. Harvey was most notable for developing the training of neonatal medicine doctors at a time when the speciality had no official recognition. Harvey was homosexual and never afraid to disclose it, even at the beginning of his career, when homophobia was more prominent.
Andrew Wilkinson is a Professor Emeritus of Paediatrics and Perinatal Medicine at All Souls College, Oxford. Wilkinson is most notable for being an international authority in neonatology and a lead author of the Standards of Care for NICU and NICE guidelines on retinopathy of prematurity.
Anne Greenough is a British neonatologist and is most notable for research into clinical and academic neonatology through work relating to the origins, markers and management of chronic lung disease following preterm birth. Greenough is Professor of Neonatology and Clinical Respiratory Physiology at King's College London.
British Association of Perinatal Medicine known as BAPM, is a charitable organization that was founded in Bristol in 1976 that is most notable for being a pressure group to advance the standards of perinatal care within the United Kingdom by a dedicated core of professional physicians who are accredited by examination.
Clare Elwell is a British academic who is a professor of medical physics and director of the Near Infrared Spectroscopy Group and Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory at University College London. She has served as president of the International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue and the Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy.
Neil McIntosh is a British and Scottish paediatrician and neonatologist who was most notable for being the leading writer of a pivotal article that defined standards of ethical behaviour in paediatrics, including withdrawal of newborn intensive care. McIntosh is emeritus professor of Neonatology and Child Life and Health at the University of Edinburgh. During McIntosh's career he has researched mineral metabolism in preterm infants, computerised acquisition of physiological data in Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing.
Perinatal stroke is a disease where an infant has a stroke between the 140th day of the gestation period and the 28th postpartum day, affecting up to 1 in 2300 live births. This disease is further divided into three subgroups, namely neonatal arterial ischemic stroke, neonatal cerebral sinovenous ischemic stroke, and presumed perinatal stroke. Several risk factors contribute to perinatal stroke including birth trauma, placental abruption, infections, and the mother's health. Detection and diagnosis of perinatal stroke are often delayed due to prenatal onset or inadequacy of neonatal signs and symptoms. A child may be asymptomatic in the early stages of life and may develop common signs of perinatal stroke such as seizures, poor coordination, and speech delays as they get older. Diagnostic tests such as magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalogram, and blood tests are conducted when doctors suspect the patients have developed signs of a perinatal stroke. The prognosis of this disease is associated with the severity and the development of the symptoms. This disease can be treated by anticoagulant and anticonvulsant drugs, surgical procedures, and therapeutic hypothermia, depending on the condition of the patient.
Henry Lewis Halliday was a British-Irish peaditrician and neonatologist. In 2021, Halliday was awarded the James Spence Medal for research into neonatology, for coordinating two of the largest neonatal multicentre trials for prevention and treatment of a number of neonatal respiratory illnesses and for a breakthrough in the development of a new lung surfactant that brought relief to very small babies suffering from infant respiratory distress syndrome (RDS).
