PEDIATRICS Vol. 108 No. 5 November 2001, pp. 1238
| The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below. |
To the Editor.
In 2000, Omar et al1 reported for the first time late-onset neutropenia in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants. The authors showed an incidence rate of late-onset neutropenia (defined as absolute neutrophil count lower than 1500/mm3 after 3 weeks of life) as high as 22%. The average nadir of the neutrophil in the neutropenic infants was 1067 ± 44/mm3. Severe late-onset neutropenia has to our knowledge not yet been described.
We report 2 cases of premature infants who developed apparently severe late-onset neutropenia.
Case 1 was born at 29 weeks