CONGENITAL ANEMIA OF THE NEW-BORN

Abstract

The normal new-born infant has a high erythrocyte count with a correspondingly high content of hemoglobin. In the past ten years, there has appeared in the pediatric literature a small group of case reports of so-called primary anemia of the new-born. No satisfactory explanation of the pathogenesis has been offered. Such cases have been reported by Ecklin,¹Donnally,²Susstrunk,³Sanford⁴(three cases), Sidbury,⁵Canino,⁶Bonar,⁷Ehrmann,⁸Happ,⁹Gelston and Sappington,¹⁰and Greenthal.¹¹In addition, Grulee12 mentioned having seen three or four cases; Foote¹³had five cases, and McClelland¹⁴had one case. In a recent monograph, Blackfan, Baty and Diamond¹⁵briefly described a case and stated that they have the records of four cases as yet unpublished. In all, the occurrence of a total of twenty-eight cases has been reported in the literature. We are in accord with