The scenarios of shock in newborn infants

Shock defines a complex dysfunction of organ perfusion, that produces a status of cellular energy failure, resulting from an insufficient supply of oxygen and nutrients to tissues. The diagnosis of shock is very difficult because of the lack of sufficiently sensitive and specific clinical criteria, and is substantially based on the demonstration of an arterial hypotension, an indicator unfit to detect the organ hypoperfusion. It determines the necessity of firmly introducing in the diagnostic run the functional echocardiography, the near infrared spectroscopy and the amplitude – integrated electroencephalography, etc., in the monitoring of the critical newborn. In order to simplify the problem, the authors identify the clinical scenarios of the newborn's shock to enhance the different pathogenetic moments and to build up appropriate therapeutic algorithms, without forgetting that at present there is no evidence that treatment of shock improves outcomes, despite the large amount of the studies conducted on this topic.