Acid-base determinations in normal premature infants in the first two months of life.

The Relationship Between Electrolyte and Acid-Base Balance in the Premature Infant during Early Postnatal Life

“…The results obtained are in accordance with the data published earlier [16,25,36], The late meta bolic acidosis starting in the first week became more severe during the second and third week and according to its self-limiting character, disappeared spontaneously thereafter.…”

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Disturbances of acid-base regulation in premature infants and some clinical aspects of them are well known [4,5,10,25,26,33,34,36], whereas the data on normal serum electrolyte values in the early postnatal life are scanty, contradictory and refer to a rather short peri od of life [9,12,13,17,31,32,37,42], In this study an attempt was made to examine what kind of changes of serum electrolyte pattern follow the changes in acid-base parameters of the blood, and how are the latter related to renal elec trolyte excretions during the first six weeks of life.

M aterial and MethodsMaterial. The studies were performed on two series of clinically healthy premature infants fed by appropriate cow's milk formula.

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The Influence of Maturity on Renal Control of Acidosis in Newborn Infants

“…Direct correlation be tween low birth weight and metabolic acidosis was found by some authors [1,6,27,34] while others did not find any such correlation [22,35,37]. No corre lation was found between the degree of acidosis and gestational age [37], Acid-base homeostasis is influenced by many factors, even in healthy new borns, such as perinatal events [5,23,26,28,29,48], environmental tempera ture [16], food [3,8,14,18,21,30,31,42,45], postnatal age [6,10,11,27,33], growth rate [24], etc. In our studies, an attempt has been made to standardize the main factors influencing the acid-base balance in the newly born.…”

Renal Bicarbonate Handling in Low Birth Weight Infants during Metabolic Acidosis

“…However, the relationship between maturity and incidence of metabolic acidosis in the neonatal period is still controversial [10,15]. Although it has been postulated that the renal HCO3 thresh old is low in prematures [22], most studies have been performed in neonates after the 1st week of life and while receiving oral feedings [2,25].…”