Severe Neonatal Hypernatraemia

Lead investigator 

Dr Sam Oddie
Consultant Neonatologist
Bradford Neonatology
Bradford Royal Infirmary
Duckworth Lane
Bradford
BD9 6RJ

Email: sam.oddie@bradfordhospitals.nhs.uk
Telephone: 01274 382668

Overview

• Hypernatraemia occurs relatively commonly in babies.
• Severe hypernatraemia occurs much less commonly, but its prevalence is unknown.
• There is significant reported comorbidity and mortality in extreme cases, and little information about prognosis or indeed which approaches are taken to treatment.
• While severe cases have not infrequently been reported in the literature, no study has yet ascertained how frequently severe hypernatraemia occurs, nor its associated mortality and short term morbidity.
• Additionally some children appear to arrive in hospital without neurological signs only to develop these after treatment.
• We propose to collect the first ever prospectively gathered population based study of this rare condition, analyse associations in terms of feeding, symptoms at presentation, approach taken to treatment and the timing of any post admission symptoms.
• We will then report incidence, presenting features, outcomes and the approach taken to treatment of such infants.

Duration: May 2009 – May 2010 (13 months inclusive)

Funding:  Bradford Teaching Hospitals

Ethical approval: This study has been approved by the Bradford REC (Ref: 08/H1302/129) and has been granted NIGB Section 251 Support (ECC/BPSU 1-06(FT1)/2009)

Further Information

• Protocol card (PDF, 632KB, 2 pages)

Support Group: 

NHS breastfeeding website - links to telephone support and to UK voluntary organisation.