David L. Price1, Suhdin Thayyil2,
Sonya Mahony1, Alan Bainbridge1, Frances M. Cowan3,
M. Ayer4, B. Guhan4, Neil Marlow2,
1Medical Physics &
Bioengineering, University College London Hospital Foundation NHS Trust,
London, United Kingdom; 2Institute for Womens Health, University
College London, London, United Kingdom; 3Institute of Clinical
Science, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; 4Calicut
Medical College, Kerala, India; 5School of Medicine, Wayne State
University, MI, United States
Although therapeutic hypothermia (TH) improves neurological outcomes and reduces brain injury following asphyxial neonatal encephalopathy (NE) in high-income countries, its efficacy cannot be extrapolated to low and mid income countries because of different population co-morbidities. We assessed the effect of TH on brain tissue injury following NE using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) analysed by Tract-based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) at a neonatal unit in South India. 12 infants were randomly allocated to TH and 12 to standard care. There was no significant fractional anisotropy (FA) difference between the two groups indicating a similar degree of injury to the white matter tracts.