Neonatal and infancy time scale for extension into childhood and adulthood

Abstract

A logarithmic time scale is presented for exposition of clinical events and related data on a unified scale extending from neonatal time into childhood and adulthood. Such a scale preserves time scale proportions but has the advantage for certain applications of featuring early neonatal and infancy events. This type of time base avoids the disadvantages of a crowded and obscured linear scale or an arbitrary and non-unified split time scale. For clinical application all timed events are initially converted to a common unit such as days. A visually comprehensible logarithmic time scale can be derived by plotting the logarithmic scale (labeled in days, base 2) and then establishing conventional calendar interval marks (weeks, months, years) and the data plot points. A simple equation is presented for establishing the time scale graph markers and the plot data points for a logarithmic time scale of any scale axis length.