Life Threatening Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding in Neonate: A Report of Two Cases

Abstract

Neonatal upper gastrointestinal bleeding is rare in healthy full term infants and is known to be caused by stress ulcer, intracranial hemorrhage, increased intracranial pressure, congenital heart disease, perinatal asphyxia, respiratory distress, hypoglycemia and use of drugs such as steroids. Mallory-Weiss syndrome and hemorrhagic gastritis can cause life threatening upper gastrointestinal bleeding and are rarely reported in neonates and young infants. The authors experienced a case of Mallory-Weiss syndrome in a full term infant without particular perinatal history and a case of acute hemorrhagic gastritis in a preterm infant born at 33 weeks of gestation and 2,260 g of birth weight, both showed life threatening upper gastrointestinal bleeding. We report these two cases with a review of current literature.