Community Supports After Surviving Extremely Low-Birth-Weight, Extremely Preterm Birth

Preterm Birth of Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants

Approximately 13% of births in the United States are preterm, defined as occurring before 37 weeks of gestation. This results in more than 540,000 infants a year born prematurely. In other words, one out of every 8 infants is born premature. Even more disturbing is that despite advances in neonatal and perinatal medicine, the incidence of prematurity has increased by 36% since the 1980’s. Over ...

Minerals and extremely low birth weight infants

The 80% of bone mineralisation occurs in the third trimester of pregnancy. The daily fetal requirement is 310 mg of calcium and 170 mg of phosphorus [1]. The bone mineral density (BMD) correlates positively with gestational age, weight and length [2]. At birth, extremely premature infants (ELBWI)canpresent hypocalcaemia because of interruption of the maternal calcium supply, high level of calci...

Hypothyroxinemia in extremely low birth weight infants

Hypothyroxinemia of prematurity (HOP) is a transient alteration in thyroid hormone availabilityfound in more than half of extremely low birth weight infants (ELBW) born at less than 30 weeks [1]. HOP is characterized by very low total T4 (TT4) and free T4 (FT4) levels with a normal or low thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH); TT4 and FT4 show a nadir at 7-10 days of life and they may remained low ...

Visual processing in adolescents born extremely low birth weight and/or extremely preterm.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Ocular growth and development differs between preterm and term-born infants and may cause long-term negative consequences for visual function, but contemporary data on long-term visual outcomes in representative samples of the highest risk extremely low birth weight (ELBW, <1000 g birth weight) or extremely preterm (EP, <28 weeks' gestation) survivors are lacking. Our ...

Functional MRI, structural MRI and school performance in extremely preterm/extremely low birth weight children