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Immature Babies (immature + baby)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	100%

Selected Abstracts

Are there common triggers of preterm deliveries?

BJOG : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OBSTETRICS & GYNAECOLOGY, Issue 6 2001
E. Petridou
Objective To assess the effect(s) of transient events which are perceived as stressful on the inseption of preterm delivery. Design A case,control study, with immature infants as cases and borderline term babies as controls. Setting A teaching maternity hospital in Athens. Population All infants born at less than 37 weeks of gestation, during a twelve-month period. Methods Information was collected about maternal socio-demographic and lifestyle characteristics, clinical variables and stressful events occurring within two weeks prior to delivery. Main outcome measures Factors affecting the risk of preterm delivery. Results Extreme prematurity (<33 weeks) is more common among younger (<25 years of age) and older (>29 years of age) women and is positively associated with parity, body mass index and smoking, whereas it is inversely associated with educational level, regular physical exercise and serious nausea/vomiting. After controlling for these factors, however, only coitus during the last weeks of pregnancy had a significant triggering effect on prematurity (P= 0.004, odds ratio 3.21, 95% CI 1.45 to 7.09 for very immature babies, and P= 0.04, OR=2.20, 95% CI 1.03 to 4.70 for immature babies). On the contrary, several events perceived as stressful, such as illness of relatives or friends, husband's departure, loss of employment, were unrelated to the onset of premature labour. Conclusions Coitus during the last few weeks of pregnancy appears to increase the risk of preterm delivery, while a possible detrimental effect of physical exertion seems more limited. Stressful events should not receive undue attention as possible causes of preterm delivery. [source]

Update on risk factors and future perspectives for preterm infants

ACTA OPHTHALMOLOGICA, Issue 2009
A HELLSTRöM
Purpose To give an update on risk factors for retinopathy of prematurity with special focus on postnatal growth and growth factors Methods The relationship between birth weight, serum levels of IGF-I as well as postnatal longitudinal growth and ROP will be presented. Preventive measures will be discussed. Results Birth weight data on 451 infants demonstrated initially a significant difference in BW between different ROP stages but when taking gestational age and sex into account the significance was eliminated. Recently, a new diagnostic tool based on weekly neonatal measurements of body weight and serum insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-I) levels, was shown to be predictive for ROP development. The algorithm "Weight IGF-I Neonatal ROP" (WINROPÔ) predicted early (mean 10 weeks) all infants who later developed proliferative ROP requiring treatment. The WINROP algorithm was then taken one step further using only serial weight measurements (n=700), excluding blood sampling for measuring IGF-I. With this approach WINROP predicted all infants who later developed proliferative ROP requiring treatment (100% sensitivity) and correctly identified 75% of those who did not develop proliferative ROP, and thus would not need any ophthalmologic screening. We have also shown a close relationship between postnatal growth, severe ROP and poor brain development. Conclusion For decades, neonatal intensive care has focused on survival of the most immature babies. Time has come to find methods to ameliorate the nutrition for the children born very preterm. It is known that IGF-I is essential for growth and development of the immature vasculature of the eye. Intervention with substitution of IGF-I to the very preterm babies to raise IGF-I up to normal intrauterine levels might be beneficial. Commercial interest [source]

Is intensive care for very immature babies justified?

ACTA PAEDIATRICA, Issue 2 2004
M Levene
Neonatal intensive care is generally considered justified in the majority of very premature infants, but there is some concern about the effectiveness of the techniques used at the margins of viability (22,24 wk of gestation). The controversy that exists in this area is largely due to a lack of agreed endpoints for geographically based populations where all live births are considered. Evaluation of outcome must also take the quality of neurological function in surviving infants into consideration, and in reviewing these data the reader is struck by the few reports providing information on a high proportion of survivors. To inform this debate, the "best data" for analysis are reviewed based on a number of criteria of quality for survival and outcome studies. Based on these data sets, >25% of babies born alive at 24 wk and below survive without major disability. Conclusion: An objective review of "best data" will provide the basis of an informed debate on whether providing intensive care for all very immature babies is appropriate in developed countries. [source]