Causes of fetal and neonatal death

Autopsy was performed on 601 out of 654 (91.9%) fetus and newborn cases of death which occurred during a four-year period between 1988-1991 at Istanbul University Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine, Gynecology Department and Neonatal Unit. According to autopsy findings, among the main causes of death in newborns were infection, hyaline membrane disease, congenital anomalies, perinatal hypoxia and immaturity, and in the fetal period, perinatal hypoxia, asphyxia and congenital anomalies. In these cases, when pathologic and clinical findings were examined, it was observed that in 204 out of 301 newborn cases (67.8%) the clinical findings were well correlated with the autopsy findings; in 97 (32.2%) of the remaining cases the main disease and primary causes of death could not be determined through clinical findings; in 69 (23%) cases, in addition to the clinical diagnosis on autopsy, minor defects were determined on autopsy which were not directly related to death. When clinical and autopsy findings were compared, diagnoses with the highest discordance were pulmonary hemorrhage infection and intracranial hemorrhage.