[Neonatal arterial ischemic stroke in term or near-term newborns: prevalence and risk factors].

The general designation ischemic perinatal stroke includes several disease states that differ in pathophysiology, timing of occurrence and presentation. While it seems logical to assume that their prevalence and their risk factors depend primarily on the considered type of stroke, most studies used inconsistent definitions or included heterogeneous populations, which limits their accuracy. Given these biases, the French Society of Neonatology and the French Centre for Paediatric Stroke wished to update the knowledge in this domain, focusing on a specific form of perinatal stroke, i.e neonatal arterial ischemic stroke (NAIS) in term or near term newborns. A comprehensive analysis of published epidemiological data was dedicated to the following issues: On July 31, 2015 a total of four hospitalized-based and five population-based studies, and six case-control studies were found. The conclusions are the following: A registry could help refining epidemiological descriptive data. It could also be used to develop etiological studies focusing on pathophysiological hypotheses derived from the identified aforementioned risk factors.