aEEG in preterm infants

Over the last decade, the survival of premature babies has improved dramatically. Such infants, especially those with extremely low birth weight, are still affected by dangerous complications occurring during the neonatal period that often cause brain damage. Intraventricular-intraparenchymal haemorrhage (IVH-IPH), periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), seizures, meningitis and hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy are the most common complications. Such problems require more specialized monitoring of brain function during this critical period. In recent years, many studies on very premature infants have shown that aEEG has a high predictive value for both short-term and long-term outcome. In fact, it has been proven that some types of background activity patterns, the absence of a sleep-wake cycle, and seizure activity are related to the onset of early complications such as IVH-IPH and PVL. Most recent studies have shown that an aEEG performed in the early hours or during the first days of life can predict the neurobehavioural development of preterm infants at 2 years and 3 years (Bayley Scale). In particular our study demonstrates that loss of sleep-wake cycling, shown by aEEG, has a high positive predictive value for the development of posthaemorrhagic hydrocephalus (PPH) in preterm infants with IVH; therefore, the study of cerebral background activity and in particular of sleep-wake cycling can be used as an early prognostic tool in patients at risk of PPH.