Oxygen is a neonatal health hazard that should be avoided in clinical practice. In this review, an international team of neonatologists and nurses assessed oxygen saturation (SpO2) targeting in preterm infants and evaluated the potential weaknesses of randomised clinical trials.ConclusionSpO2 of 85–89% can increase mortality and 91–95% can cause hyperoxia and ill effects. Neither of these ranges can be recommended, and wider intermediate targets, such as 87–94% or 88–94%, may be safer.

Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy is a major complication of perinatal asphyxia, with high morbidity, mortality and neurologic sequelae as cerebral palsy, mostly in poor or developing countries. The difficulty in the diagnosis and management of newborns in these countries is astonishing, thus resulting in unreliable data on this pathology and bad outcomes regarding mortality and incidence of neurologic sequelae. The objective of this article is to present a new clinical diagnostic score to be started in the delivery room and to guide the therapeutic approach, in order to improve these results.

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