Perspectives on perinatal brain damage.

The author presents a perspective on perinatal brain injury from the point of brain development, and discusses subsequent adverse outcomes. It is stressed that injury is frequently attributed to perinatal causes and avoidable circumstances when in fact the obstetrician could not possibly foresee or circumvent it. Evidence of the dramatic recuperative powers of many infants, even when dying and being resuscitated, are compared with the minimal provocations frequently associated with handicap, underscoring the concept of prior injury or unique fragility. The review is presented to provoke new insights and perspectives.