Abstract
Background: Pneumomediastinum is an uncommon cause of neonatal respiratory distress. Clinical history and examination of the neonate may be uninformative in determining the aetiology of the respiratory distress. Chest x-ray can be diagnostic of pneumomediastinum however is often difficult to interpret. Case presentation: A 36 week gestation newborn was delivered by emergency caesarean section, intubated and given intermittent positive pressure ventilation via Neopuff™ for apnoea before being extubated to CPAP. Chest radiography initially showed bilateral upper zone opacities, presenting a diagnostic dilemma; however subsequent films demonstrated a pneumomediastinum which was managed conservatively and resolved. Conclusions: The "sail sign" describes an uncommon radiological appearance of a pneumomediastinum in neonates and infants. With careful conservative management, a spontaneous resolution without longterm sequelae can be expected.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 3 |
| Journal | BMC Pediatrics |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Keywords
- newborn infants
- pneumomediastinum
- thymus