ESPE Abstracts

Key words: neonates, hypoglycemia, size for gestational age, gender, mode of delivery.

Introduction: Neonatal hypoglycemia is one of the most common treatable metabolic disorders. Universal newborn screening for hypoglycemia is primordial in detecting persistent hypoglycemia and asymptomatic episodes in order to save neonates from adverse neurological outcomes and brain injury.

Objectives: To assess the incidence of neonatal hypoglycemia and to correlate it at one and four hours of life with size for gestational age, gender and obstetric mode of delivery. To prove the importance of hypoglycemia screening and monitoring.

Methods and materials: This is a longitudinal prospective study conducted at Notre Dame Des Secours University Medical Center (NDS-UMC), Byblos, Lebanon, involving 300 asymptomatic healthy newborns with no known neonatal hypoglycemia risk factors and small for gestational age (SGA) newborns, who were admitted to the maternity ward. Glycemia was measured by a glucometer using reagent strips at one and four hours of life.

Results: The incidence of neonatal hypoglycemia in our population was 30% at one hour of life and 18.7% at four hours of life. At one hour of life, there was only a significant relationship between the mode of delivery and neonatal hypoglycemia, whereas a higher percentage of neonates born from vaginal birth had a normal hemoglucotest. At four hours of life, no statistical significance was found between the studied variables and hypoglycemia, whether the newborns were normoglycemic or hypoglycemic at one hour of life.

Conclusion: Vaginal birth was found to be a protective factor associated with neonatal normoglycemia after delivery. There was no gender predilection. Universal neonatal hypoglycemia screening in all newborns is necessary in order to prevent recurrent hypoglycemia and to detect asymptomatic episodes.