Info on Early Preemies Survival
By Danell Swim
April 17, 2008
Doctors now have a better way of helping parents make an agonizing decision — whether to take heroic steps to save a very premature baby.
The number of weeks in the womb has generally been the chief factor. But a new study shows others are important, too — including whether the infant is a girl and whether the child gets lung-maturing steroids shortly before birth.
Those extra factors can count as much as an extra week of pregnancy.
The new information could change how doctors and parents decide what kind of care to provide to tiny, fragile premature infants, said John Langer, a co-author of the study being published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Besides being a girl and getting the steroids, an extra 3 1/2 ounces or so of weight and being a single birth also helped as much as an extra week of pregnancy, the study found.
“For the first time, parents and their doctors will have the best available information on which to base one of the most difficult and time-sensitive decisions they are ever likely to face,” said Langer, who works in Maryland as a statistician for the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute.
The research focused on extremely premature babies, those born after 22 to 25 weeks in the womb. A full term is about 40 weeks.
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