الفهرس 
Platelet Morphology and UltrastructureOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
In busy NICUs evaluation and management of patients with neonatal thrombocytopenia is an everyday occurrence.
In most cases, simple clinical and laboratory evaluation provides the cause of the thrombocytopenia and allows a prediction of its clinical course.
Thrombocytopenia defined as platelet count of
< 150x109 /L in any neonate regardless of gestational age.
The incidence of neonatal thrombocytopenia varies greatly from <1.1 in healthy term babies to around one third of neonates admitted to NICU.
The incidence of Thrombocytopenia in preterm neonates in NICU is in much higher, reaching 22.35%, with severe thrombocytopenia (platelets <50 x109 /L) in 6% of all admission.
Thrombocytopenia in the newborn rarely is indicative of a primary disorder of megakaryopoiesis, but more often is the result of either systemic illness or transfer of maternal antibodies directed against fetal platelets.
Our study aimed to estimated the causes, severity and outcome of neonatal thrombocytopenia in neonates admitted to our NICU.
All study neonates (172) were subjected to the following:
1) Full medical history : (Gestational age- Gender- Birth weight).
2) Thorough clinical examination: (anthropometric measurements - presence of signs of associated clinical condition- type of hemorrhage).
3) Laboratory investigations: (Complete blood count-C reactive protein-Blood and urine culture -Liver and Kidney function tests-and special investigations as needed).
4) Radiological investigations as needed: (Chest X- ray-Abdominal and Cranial ultrasonography).
Our results revealed that:
- There was a significant difference between the studied groups regarding weight and non significant difference between the studied groups regarding gestational age and postnatal age.
- Sepsis was the most common associated clinical condition in the studied groups.
- The most frequent associated maternal diseases were pregnancy induced hypertension and diabetes mellitus.
- The most common sites of major hemorrhage was pulmonary hemorrhage (5.8%) followed by GIT hemorrhage (5.2%) and intraventricular hemorrhage (4.7%).
- There was a significant difference between the studied groups regarding platelet, whole blood,
- Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) and NEC were associated with higher incidence of moderate and severe thrombocytopenia.
- Bleeding was found to be related to severity of thrombocytopenia and to lesser extent to late onset thrombocytopenia.
- There was improvement in most cases due to proper treatment.
- Mortality in thrombocytopenic neonates was higher in preterm neonates. Bleeding, moderate or severe thrombocytopenia and early onset thrombocytopenia were associated with increased mortality.