Adrenal Sono-Volumetry in ‘Stressed’ Neonates

Abstract

Background: Neonates are exposed to multiple stressors. Adrenals, important organs of stress response, are likely to mirror the stress, neonate is exposed to. This study was done to ascertain if adrenal sonovolumetry reliably assesses presence of stressors in neonates.Subjects and Methods: A prospective case-control study was done in a tertiary hospital including all neonates admitted to NICU in study period and healthy full term newborns as controls. Both cases and controls underwent adrenal sonography.  Adrenal Volumes were calculated as  product of area in coronal and length in perpendicular plane. The volume was divided by neonatal weight to calculate Adrenal volume-index(VI). Mean VIs of cases and controls were compared for any significant difference.Results:Forty cases including 25 preterm and 15 term neonates and 80 controls were included in the study.  There was negative correlation between neonatal weight and adrenal size among preterm neonates. Mean adrenal VI of cases were significantly higher than controls for both preterm and term cases. Preterm neonates less than 32 weeks at birth had significantly higher adrenal VI than preterm cases more than 32 weeks at birth.Conclusion: Sono-volumetry of adrenals can be used as marker of stress in neonates irrespective of term or preterm birth.