Late Haemorrhagic Disease of Newborn: Can It be Prevented by Changing Prophylaxis Policy?

Background: Vitamin K deficiency can cause severe haemorrhage in the newborn and is an important cause of infant morbidity and mortality. HDN can be classified according to the time of presentation after birth into early (0–24 hours), classical (1–14 days) and late (2–12 weeks) HDN. Late HDN, which presents after the first week of life, mainly manifests as intracranial haemorrhage, depending upon the site and amount of bleeding, it either results in mortality or life long sequelae in the form of cerebral palsy and scar epilepsy with or without cognitive impairment.

Objective: To determine the frequency of ICH about vitamin K deficiency and outcome in infants aged 2 to 24 weeks.

Materials and Methods: From 1 September 2017 to 30 September 2019 we retrieved the retrospective data of 8 patients with late HDN admitted to Bapuji Child Health Institute and Chigateri Government General Hospital, Davangere.

Results: Six of eight cases with late HDN had an intracranial haemorrhage, of whom 5 patients died (62%), one ended up with neurological sequelae (12%) and 2 cases had an extracranial bleed. Out of these 8 cases, 5 had not received vitamin K at birth.

Conclusion: For neonates on strict breastfeeding, despite some with vitamin K prophylaxis, some patients still may suffer from intracranial and extracranial bleeding due to late HDN. Therefore, a change in strategy in the form of making the paediatricians and Anganwadi workers working in subcenters to give vitamin K, who have been vaccinating the babies after birth, would increase the vitamin K coverage.