Twelve years of experience in the treatment of newborns with intrauterine gastrointestinal perforation.

Although sepsis has been held primarily responsible for the deaths in these infants from past to present, insufficiency in lung capacity necessitating intubation negatively affects their survival. Early passage of stool is not always an indicator of good prognosis after the operation, and patients may die due to malnutrition and dehydration, even after they are discharged after feeding, defecating and having weight gain.