What are the common diseases in newborns?

The arrival of every baby is something to celebrate, but some babies become sick after birth. This often leaves first-time parents feeling overwhelmed. So what are the common diseases in newborns?

Pathological jaundice

Severe jaundice is more common in low-birth-weight babies, newborns with hypothermia, asphyxia, hypoxia, and severe infections.

Its symptoms have many similarities with intracranial hemorrhage, asphyxia, and neonatal sepsis, such as: drowsiness, refusal to feed, decreased muscle tone, staring eyes, screaming, convulsions, and respiratory failure. The most prominent feature is the deep and severe jaundice.

Kernicterus is a serious disease with a high mortality rate and many sequelae, often resulting in lifelong disability, such as ataxia, athetosis, deafness, blindness, and mental retardation. It is important to detect it early and treat it actively, and never treat it as physiological jaundice and delay treatment.

Neonatal pneumonia

It is divided into aspiration pneumonia (amniotic fluid, meconium, breast milk) and infectious pneumonia (intrauterine infection and postnatal infection).

Pneumonia in newborns does not cause obvious coughing and breathing difficulties like pneumonia in infants and young children. Premature babies, in particular, rarely cough after pneumonia. In addition to shortness of breath, listlessness, less crying, and refusal to feed, they also have white foam at the mouth, bluish triangle around the mouth, groaning, and nodding breathing.

thrush

It is caused by a fungus and is mostly caused by infection of the nipples, fingers and skin, especially contamination of pacifiers.

Symptoms include the appearance of white dots or flakes on the oral mucosa shortly after birth, which look like milk curds and are easy to scrape off on the gums and buccal mucosa, which may affect breastfeeding.

Omphalitis in newborns

The umbilicus is an open door. Improper care can cause sepsis or septicemia, or even peritonitis. It must not be neglected.

When there is purulent secretion in the navel or the skin of the navel becomes red, it should be taken seriously. In the early stage, you can use 3% hydrogen peroxide or 75% alcohol to clean and dry, then apply 2% gentian violet. If symptoms such as fever, drowsiness, refusal to drink milk, vomiting, etc. occur, the baby should be sent to the hospital for treatment immediately.

Neonatal dacryocystitis

Many babies have eye mucus around their eyes from time to time. Some careless parents don't take it seriously, thinking that all children are like this when they are born and it will get better on its own after a while. Pediatric ophthalmologists remind: If your baby continues to have eye mucus, he or she may have dacryocystitis.

Dacryocystitis in children is a congenital eye disease that is more common in infants around one month old, with the peak period for symptoms appearing between 4 and 5 months after birth.