Symptoms of intrauterine pneumonia in small newborns

The weight of newborns is relatively small, which is often related to premature birth. Some premature babies are underweight, and the immunity of such children is relatively poor, which can easily lead to the occurrence of some diseases. For example, pneumonia is a common manifestation. Children often have fever, shortness of breath, cough, foaming at the mouth and other symptoms. This is a great harm to the child and requires timely treatment.

1. Rapid breathing: The normal respiratory rate of a newborn is about 40 times per minute, while the respiratory rate of a newborn with pneumonia can increase to more than 60 times per minute. Newborns have small lung capacity, and it is difficult to increase ventilation by deepening the breathing amplitude. Therefore, after lesions appear in the apex of the lung, the ventilation volume can only be increased by speeding up the breathing rate. Therefore, rapid breathing is the most common clinical manifestation of neonatal pneumonia.

2. Cyanosis: Children with pneumonia may have cyanosis around the mouth. Severely ill children may have cyanosis on the lips, nail beds, head, face and whole body. Cyanosis is a sign of hypoxia.

3. Cough: Newborns suffering from amniotic fluid aspiration pneumonia, meconium aspiration pneumonia and intrauterine infectious pneumonia often do not have respiratory symptoms such as nasal congestion, runny nose and cough. Postnatal infectious pneumonia is mainly transmitted through the respiratory tract, and there are relatively more respiratory symptoms, which can manifest as choking cough during feeding, single cough and short cough.

4. Foaming at the mouth: Foaming at the mouth is one of the characteristics of neonatal pneumonia. The foam mainly comes from tracheal secretions.

5. Fever: Most newborns with pneumonia do not have fever. Even if they have fever, the temperature is mostly low and lasts for 2-3 days, rarely more than a week. Severely ill children sometimes not only do not have fever, but only have a low body temperature.

6. Other symptoms: poor feeding, weak spirit, and some children also have digestive tract symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting.

Medical history and physical signs: If the pregnant woman has had an infectious disease before delivery or the fetus has suffered intrauterine distress, the newborn should be alert to the possibility of prenatal infectious pneumonia. The diagnosis of postnatal pneumonia depends on the symptoms and signs of the child. Although the diagnosis is relatively easy, attention should be paid to the development of the disease and complications.

Pneumonia caused by prenatal infection usually occurs within 3 to 7 days after birth and the symptoms are often atypical. The younger the gestational age, the more atypical the symptoms. About half of the patients have normal body temperature, while the rest have unstable body temperature. The body temperature of seriously ill children or premature infants is often not high. Symptoms are mostly non-characteristic manifestations such as refusal to eat, drowsiness or irritability, poor complexion, no weight gain and no cough. Soon, shortness of breath, nasal flaring and groaning, soft tissue depression during inspiration, and increased heart rate appear. Premature infants are prone to sleep apnea. Pulmonary signs include increased or decreased breath sounds, accompanied by dry or wet rales, but may also be completely negative.