ABSTRACT
Neonatal surgeons are paediatric surgeons who manage life-threatening non-cardiac congenital anomalies and the acquired condition necrotising enterocolitis, seen in premature babies. Neonates lose heat and fluid rapidly, have poor nutritional reserves, are susceptible to infection and have an immature blood-brain barrier. A nasogastric tube coiled in the upper oesophageal pouch on a chest radiograph suggests the diagnosis. The obstruction in duodenal atresia usually lies just distal to the ampulla of Vater. Congenital or acquired extrahepatic biliary atresia is a progressive obliterative cholangiopathy with absent or narrow bile ducts. In gastroschisis, an abdominal wall defect lies to the right-hand side of the umbilical cord and transmits the small and large intestine, stomach, bladder and sometimes the ovaries or undescended abdominal testes.
