[Advances in neonatal neurology: 1950-2000]

There have been innumerable advances in medicine and its specialties in the last half century. Neonatal intensive care did not really begin until the 1960's, when adequate mechanical ventilation for newborns became generally available.

With the increased survival of very small prematures, even with a smaller individual morbidity, a larger total number of survivors is graduating these units. Will they be able to function in this increasingly more complicated world? Organizational, Diagnostic, and Therapeutic advances in Neonatology and Neonatal Neurology are reviewed. Then, advances in some of those neonatal entities that threaten the CNS are briefly reviewed. Congenital anomalies, metabolic disease, infection, intraventricular hemorrhage, hydrocephalus, periventricular leukomalacia, are touched upon. Finally, the entity of hypoxi-ischemic encephalopathy is reviewed, emphasizing that its morbidity has changed little through the years, and describing a new hypothermic approach to its management currently under way in a global cooperative study.