Consequences of a newborn infection
The consequences of a newborn infection can be very serious. It requires immediate therapy, in which no time should be lost. Neonatal sepsis is a systemic infection affecting the whole body and blood system, which can be fatal for a newborn.
Since children do not yet have a mature immune system, no spontaneous healing can take place without medical intervention. In the course of the infection, the children sometimes show very unspecific symptoms such as apathy, circulatory disorders with a rapid heartbeat (tachycardia), breathing problems and a change in skin color (from pink to green-yellow). In principle, any organ can be affected by sepsis, so that, for example, the urinary tract or even the ear can be affected with a severe middle ear infection in babies.
Particularly dangerous, however, are newborn meningitis (meningitis) and newborn pneumonia (pneumonia), which can be caused by sepsis. The inflammation of the meninges can manifest itself by shrill screaming, weakness in drinking, lethargy and a bulging fontanel. The neonatal pneumonia makes it difficult for the child to breathe and leads to rapid breathing (tachypnea) and nasal wings.
The prognosis is good if the children are treated early. However, long-term damage may persist if the disease progresses severely or if therapy is delayed. There may be permanent neurological damage or high blood pressure in the pulmonary vessels.
How dangerous is a newborn infection?
A newborn sepsis is a case for the intensive care unit. It is a highly acute clinical picture and represents an emergency in any case. Therapy must be started immediately to avoid consequential damage.
The longer the neonatal infection persists, the more organs are involved and the higher the risk of the infection spreading to the brain. In the worst case, the newborn infection escalates into septic shock. At the end of the septic shock is the circulatory failure.
This leads to acute kidney and lung failure and can even lead to multi-organ failure, so that a newborn sepsis can be fatal within a few hours or days without therapy. However, the earlier the therapy is initiated, the better the prognosis of the children. Thanks to good prophylaxis and rapid antibiotic therapy, only about 4% of children die of newborn sepsis.
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