Outcomes of Extremely Immature Infants -- A Perinatal Dilemma

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Regionalization of perinatal care and technological advances in the 1970s were accompanied by the improved survival of preterm infants born after 26 weeks' gestation with birth weights above 750 g. Beginning in the early 1980s, active obstetrical and delivery-room care was applied to progressively smaller and less mature infants. Survival increased, but the rates of neonatal morbidity (from chronic lung disease, septicemia, periventricular hemorrhage, and retinopathy of prematurity), length of hospitalization, and costs of care were exceptionally high as compared with those for larger, more mature infants. Questions were raised, such as “How small is too small?” and “Where and . . .