Biography
Biography: Mahmoud Saleh Elhalik
Abstract
The impact of the NICU environment on the infant’s developing brain became evident to health care providers since many decades. The intrauterine environment protects the developing fetus against harsh outside stimulation while providing a variety of tactile, vestibular, chemical, hormonal, auditory and visual sensory stimuli in an integrated, optimum fashion. In contrast, prematurely born neonates and even some term newborns, exposed to fluctuations in hemodynamic vitals, temperature, touch, vestibular, gustatory, olfaction, noise, light, oxygen and nutrients, which can be very harmful on the developing brain and may permanently alter normal brain development. Moreover, uneventful events during delivery or neonatal sepsis, IVH, HIE and other illnesses can do the same harm to the neonatal developing brain and negatively affect the neurodevelopmental outcome of the NICU graduates. The concept of Neuro-NICU have emerged mainly in USA over the past few years in an attempt to protect the developing neonatal brain to ensure normal neurodevelopmental growth.