Neonatal Gastric Perforation

Abstract

Introduction Perforation of the stomach in a newborn infant is an unusual surgical emergency requiring early diagnosis and treatment for survival; there have been an increasing number of case reports in the recent literature, and this paper will summarize available information on 143 infants and add six additional patients, three surviving repair of gastric perforation. Four of the infants were delivered at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania between 1953 and 1961; the other two were born in neighboring institutions. Review of Literature Siebold⁸⁰ in 1825 is credited with the first report of a perforated stomach in a newborn, a premature infant who developed symptoms of weak cry and feebleness on the second day of life and at postmortem examination was found to have a gangrenous rupture along the lesser curvature. Lee and Wells⁴⁴ in 1923 reported an infant with a gastric ulcer that had perforated in