Abstract
Improvements in obstetrical and neonatal care during the last decades have led to a marked increase in survival rate of preterm and term infants. In order to study the short- and long-term outcome in infants who survived neonatal intensive care (NIC) and were born in the county of Uppsala between January 1st 1986 and April 30th 1989, a prospective long-term follow-up study was conducted.Epidemiological data on all infants born in the county during the study period and the short-term outcome, measured as overall neuromotor function at term and at 2, 4, 6 and 10 months of corrected age in 245 infants surviving NIC and 72 healthy control infants are presented. The infants' neuromotor function was evaluated with different clinical neurological methods.In the study population of NIC infants 85.9% survived the neonatal period. The early infant mortality was high in this group 11.6% compared to that of all infants born in the county of Uppsala (0.30%). Only a minority of the infants showed abnormal neuromotor function. A comparison of the results of the overall evaluation of neuromotor function at 10 months of age with those of the examinations made at an earlier age showed poor correspondence in individual infants, especially in preterm and very preterm infants.
Highlights
In the last decades there has been a sharp decline in perinatal mortality, largely as a result of improved survival rates of low birth weight and preterm infants [10, 21, 48, 49, 50]
Perinatal epidemiology Of all infants born alive in the county of Uppsala between January 1" 1986 and April 30'" 1989, 311 (2.6%) needed neonatal intensive care (NIC) as defined previously
In the present ongoing follow-up study these requirements have been taken into account and the purpose of this paper is to report the perinatal mortality, the need for neonatal intensive care, the early morbidity and the short-term outcome at 10 months of age in a geographically defined population of preterm and fullterm infants who needed NIC, together with a group of neonatally healthy control infants
Summary
In the last decades there has been a sharp decline in perinatal mortality, largely as a result of improved survival rates of low birth weight and preterm infants [10, 21, 48, 49, 50]. During the same period new intensive care techniques have become available for the treatment of neonatal diseases with a high neonatal mortality. Examples of these are new ventilatory techniques [25,46,47] and surfactant replacement therapy [14,27,28]. Improvements in obstetrical care have not yet reduced the incidence of preterm birth or intrauterine growth retardation and the stillbirth rate has been only marginally affected. Better maternity care, monitoring of risk deliveries and timing of obstetrical interventions have resulted in lower morbidity in preterm infants and in infants of high risk mothers, and a reduction in the proportion of high risk deliveries [8, 30]. The use of antenatal steroids has lowered the incidence and severity of respiratory distress syndrome [6, 28, 34]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
