Hi, can anyone help  me with a topic that I can't found and it's about " Neonatal Cerebral Depression". Already all I know about the theme is when the neonatal asphyxia criteria are not well established, in a patient with low apgar and border gasometric criteria.

Regards.

Edgar Samuel Aguilar-Figueroa, Resident of Pediatric's: Second Year. Tacubaya's Pediatrics Hospital. Mexico City.

Dear Edgar, 

we rarely use that diagnosis (ICD-10, P91.4) , but do it sometimes if a baby has had somewhat low apgar (like 6-7) and has been admitted due to some irritability.

Like an "asphyxia light" diagnosis. However, I would regard it the diagnosis as a bit subjective. Am not aware of any formal definition of "Neonatal Cerebral Depression".

I've only rarely used that particular term/code and then in the context Stefan mentioned.  If a patient is truly encephelopathic without obvious antecedent asphyxial event, though, I will code neonatal encephalopathy P91.819.  My one comment if you're trying to learn about this patient population is that, at least where I did my fellowship, maternal SSRI exposure seemed to be significantly over-represented in this population and I can recall cooling several babies who in retrospect probably had SSRI exposure not hypoxic insult.