Assessing variability in neonatal blood pressure, notably in hypotension

Abstract

New reports corroborate our prior finding that hypotension in infancy is associated with impaired neurodevelopment later in childhood. We had also found that neurological deficit is further associated with a more pronounced circadian variation in transcutaneous pO2 (tcpO2). New evidence in adulthood prompts the recommendation to automatically monitor vital signs for continued surveillance, relying on the methods of chronobiology for data analysis as-one-goes. This applies notably early in extra-uterine life when infants may be particularly sensitive to ischemic cerebral injury secondary to systemic hypotension. Monitoring at this sensitive lifetime stage has also provided a glimpse of unseen effects of the cosmos on the patterns of blood pressure variability, detected by chronomics.