This Clinic in Developmental Medicine describes a meticulous survey of germinal matrix/intraventricular haemorrhage in preterm infants. The babies weighed 501-2000g at their birth in three New Jersey counties between 1984 and 1987. They were studied prospectively with cranial ultrasound; the findings were correlated with very detailed pathological examination of the brains of those who died, and with later outcome in the survivors. The numbers studied in this population-based sample were large enough both to test and to generate hypotheses about the causes and consequences of haemorrhage.

Nigel Paneth and Raoul Rudelli are the authors of Brain Damage in the Preterm Infant, published by Wiley.