Blood pressure monitoring in the newborn.

The association of cerebral palsy and cerebral ischaemic lesions such as periventricular leucomala- cia is now clearly established. - Such lesions are likely to be caused by changes in cerebral perfusion. The hypothesis that cerebral perfusion is 'pressure- passive' in some newborn infants is becoming increasingly widely held and in these infants changes in systemic blood pressure are likely to be directly transmitted to the cerebral circulation.