[Management of asymptomatic hypoglycaemia in healthy term neonates by nurses and midwives].

Neonatal hypoglycaemia is not in itself a medical condition, but can be an indication of underlying illness or a failure to adapt physiologically to the outside world at birth. Hypoglycaemia can lead to death if it is not recognised, and long term neurodevelopmental outcomes are still not clear. It is almost 70 years since hypoglycaemia was first recognised in newborn and older infants but controversy still surrounds its significance, definition and management. The availability of point-of-care and micro-sampling techniques to detect “low” blood glucose levels and an increasingly litigious society have resulted in a definition for hypoglycaemia that is considerably higher than that proposed by Hartmann and Jaudon in 1937. Concern that hypoglycaemia without any associated clinical signs (asymptomatic) might result in poor neurodevelopmental outcomes has resulted in a definition of hypoglycaemia as a blood glucose concentration more than two standard deviations below the mean for populations of both healthy term and low birth weight infants.