[Frequency of pulmonary causes of death in perinatal post-mortem material (author's transl)].

Morphological lung changes were found to be the cause of death in 304 of 618 live births that died during the perinatal period in the years 1975-1979 (49.2%:369 males, 249 females). Causes were hyaline membrane disease (168 = 27.2%), massive lung bleeding (64 = 10.4%), pneumonia (36 = 5.8%), atelectases (29 = 4.7%), and amniotic fluid aspiration (7 = 1.1%). There were minor sex differences in the frequency of the causes, which were often present in combination. Among the pulmonary causes of death, hyaline membrane disease was the most common (55.3%), followed by massive bleeding (22.1%), pneumonia (11.8), atelectases (9.5%), and amniotic fluid aspiration (2.3%), with marked differences among premature and mature births.