BACKGROUND Executive function (EF) emerges in infancy and continues to develop throughout childhood. Executive dysfunction is believed to contribute to learning and attention problems in children at school age. Children born very preterm are more prone to these problems than their full-term peers. AIM To compare EF in very preterm and full-term infants at 8 months after expected date of deliv...

 Abstract  Background: The quality of life and standard of health care in a society is measured  by its preterm infants' mortality rate. The popularity and credibility of alternative  treatment such as touch therapy may be effective in preterm and low birth weight  infants in order to increase their survival rate. The aim of this study was to determine  the effect of touch intervention on the w...

I t has been nearly a decade since the publication of Nutrition of the Preterm Infant, Second Edition. Numerous changes in neonatal care have occurred in the interim, and the need to refine nutritional care of the preterm infant is apparent. The science base indicates gaps in our knowledge of appropriate nutritional support and the need to establish new recommendations have evolved. Thus, we no...

AIM The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that singleton late preterm infants (34 0/7 to 36 6/7 weeks of gestation) compared with full-term infants have a higher incidence of short-term morbidity and stay longer in hospital. METHODS In this retrospective, multicentre study, electronic data of children born at five hospitals in Switzerland were recorded. Short-term outcome of late p...

Maternal still face is a robust experimental procedure designed to examine infants' sensitivity to social contingency and reactivity to its violation. To extend earlier research on the still-face effect on term infants in Western cultures, the present study compared Taiwanese term and preterm infants' attention and affective response to and recovery from a modified maternal still-face procedure...

In this issue of Pediatrics, Fyfe et al present convincing evidence that cerebral tissue oxygenation index (TOI) is lower in habitually supinesleeping preterm infants placed prone rather than supine, and that the cerebral TOI for preterm infants placed prone is lower than the TOI for term infants placed prone. Increased rates of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) among all infants sleeping pro...

BACKGROUND Preterm birth rate continues to rise around the world mainly at the expense of late preterm newborns, recently defined as births between the gestational age of 34 weeks and 36-6/7 weeks. Late preterm infants are considered to have significantly more short-term and longterm adverse outcomes than term infants. DATA SOURCES Articles concerning morbidity, mortality and long-term outcom...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Infants born preterm are significantly lighter and shorter on reaching term equivalent age (TEA) than are those born at term, but the relation with body composition is less clear. We conducted a systematic review to assess the body composition at TEA of infants born preterm. METHODS The databases MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, HMIC, "Web of Science," and "CSA Conference Pap...

AIMS To describe the immune response of preterm infants to combined diphtheria/tetanus/5 component acellular pertussis-Haemophilus influenzae type b inactivated polio vaccine (DT5aP-Hib-IPV) and meningococcal serogroup C conjugate vaccine (MCC) under accelerated schedule. To compare results with term infants immunised with DT5aP-Hib-IPV and with historical data from preterm infants immunised wi...

OBJECTIVES Stress systems may be altered in the long term in preterm infants for multiple reasons, including early exposure to procedural pain in neonatal intensive care. This question has received little attention beyond hospital discharge. Stress responses (cortisol) to visual novelty in preterm infants who were born at extremely low gestational age (ELGA; < or =28 weeks), very low gestationa...