[MRI and autopsy findings in the brain of a child born with extreme prematurity].

We present the brain autopsy and MRI findings in a four-year-old boy who was born at 23 weeks of gestational age and 700 gram of birthweight and experienced an episode of cardiac arrest at 10 months of age. Neuropathological study showed the findings compatible with cardiac arrest syndrome, the gliosis or neuronal loss of extensive cerebral lesions including the cerebral white matter and cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum and hippocampus, and large ulegyric formation in the bilateral parietal and occipital lobes, as well as the periventricular leukomalacia, which characterize hypoxic-ischemic insult in the brain of preterm infant. MRI performed eight months before his death demonstrated prominent atrophy and periventricular and parenchymal hyperintensity of the bilateral occipital lobes consistent with the above pathological findings.