The night light levels were low during both periods, and lowering the light levels induced a greater variation of light, which may impair sleep quality. All measured noise levels were high during both periods, which could contribute to sleep disturbance, and the implementation of guidelines significantly lowers some important noise levels. The background noise level was unchanged.

No abstract

Cranial sonography has become the main modality of the investigation and diagnosis of a wide variety of neonatal intracranial abnormalities. Occasionally, cranial sonograms reveal basal ganglia and thalami bright echoes. It is believed that these lesions are indicative of vasculitis due to intrauterine infections, in particular with cytomegalovirus (CMV). We hypothesized that the incidence of proven neonatal intrauterine TORCH infection is low and that screening of all asymptomatic infants with bright lenticulostriate echodensities would not be cost-effective. We reviewed brain sonograms of 3700 infants, performed over a period of 3 1/2 years. Echogenic basal ganglia vasculature were observed in 75 patients (2%). Chart review performed for clinical presentation and TORCH studies showed that only one infant had confirmed intrauterine congenital infection, which was by CMV. This infant had no signs or symptoms of CMV. In addition, there were 4 patients with chromosomal anomalies among the 75 patients (5%), of these one had trisomy 13 and another-trisomy 21. Our results indicate that echogenic basal ganglia blood vessels are not an exceptional finding on cranial sonograms, and are seldom associated with intrauterine infection. We conclude that it is not cost-effective to screen infants with echogenic basal ganglia blood vessels for intrauterine infection, unless clinical suspicion exists.

Breath sounds in healthy asymptomatic subjects can be recorded and displayed in a dynamic series of images that have predictable and characteristic features recognizable and complemented by quantitative lung data. Identification and description of these characteristic image features in this study will facilitate future studies of vibration imaging in specific pulmonary diseases.