Neonatal encephalopathyis defined as aclinical syndrome presenting with analtered level of consciousness or epilepsy, and usually associated with difficulty withi nitiating and maintaining respiration, abnormal sensorium andr eflexes.
Neonatal encephalopathy is the third leading cause of under 5 years mortality and contributes substantially to long-term neurological morbidity world-wide.
MRI is the method of choice that plays apivotal role in the diagnostic evaluation of patients presented by clinical picture of neonatal encephalopathy.
The adding of advanced techniques, such as DWI/ADC, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) can improve the accuracy of diagnoses.
Over the years, the term “neonatal encephalopathy", has been used by many as asynonym of “Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy", on the ground that it is the most common cause of neonatal encephalopathy, for that reason it is important to emphasize that many different processes leading to neonatal encephalopathy may develop prenatally, at birth or immediately post-delivery and result from mainly, but not exclusively, vascular, genetic, metabolic, infectious, and traumatic processes, most of them are treatable if they are early diagnosed, while their treatment may be hindered by the assumption that the diagnosis is HIE.