This paper examines the determinants of very low birth weight infant (or neonatal) mortality using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research database from 1997 to 2009. After infants are discharged from hospital, it is not possible to track their mortality, so the Cox proportional hazard model is used to analyze the very low birth weight infant mortality rate. In order to clarify treatment ...

BACKGROUND Early life stress, such as painful and stressful procedures during neonatal intensive care after preterm birth, can permanently affect physiological, hormonal and neurobiological systems. This may contribute to altered programming of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA) and provoke changes in HPAA function with long-term health impacts. Previous studies suggest a lower HPAA...

INTRODUCTION This study analyses the DHS 1993, 2000 and 2006-07 and NFSS 2009 survey data to investigate trends, inequalities and determinants of low birth weight (LBW) in Sri Lanka. METHODS We re-evaluated recent trends in LBW incidence, adjusting for changes in the coverage of DHS surveys to ensure comparability, and used multivariate logistic regression to investigate determinants. We quan...

The preterm very low birth weight infants are at high risk of developing neurodevelopmental delay despite little or no medical complications at the time of birth. The care and interventions of such infants have an impact on the pre-existing risk. The Developmental Care Interventions (DCI) are the range of treatment strategies aiming to alleviate the risk thereby improving neuro-developmental ou...

BACKGROUND Bilirubin-related neurotoxicity is an important clinical issue in very low birthweight (VLBW) infants, and the existing literature is inconsistent. OBJECTIVE To analyze the relationship between maximal serum unconjugated bilirubin levels (SBL) and neurodevelopmental outcome at 2-year corrected age in VLBW infants. METHODS Phototherapy was initiated in all infants born before 33 w...

Extremely premature and very low birth weight infants have multiple, costly and complex health and developmental issues. After the neonatal period, the best chance for these children to avoid extreme disability and dependence, and thereby reach their potential, is with timely and intensive early intervention by appropriate allied health services, such as speech, occupational and physiotherapy. ...

Early age of assessment is the limitation of present study, and a much longer follow up might have been more informative. We would like to clarify that DQ of all VLBW infants was not above 90, it was the mean DQ of this group. A mean DQ below 85 was observed in 22% of infants. This finding along with difference of 6 point in mean DQ between two groups cannot be underestimated and warrants a lon...

conclusions: the increased survival of preterm infants was not associated with lower complications. there is now increasing evidence of sustained adverse outcomes into school age and adolescence, for preterm infants. results: cerebral palsy especially spastic diplegia, intellectual disability, visual (retinopathy of prematurity) and hearing impairments are the main neurodevelopmental disorders ...

BACKGROUND Little is known about how contributing factors of development change during early childhood in Japan. The aim of this study was to investigate the factors that contributed to the developmental attainment of children between 9 and 18 months of age using prospective longitudinal data from a developmental cohort study. METHODS We used data from observations at 3 time points (at infant...