Should we look after babies less than 800 g?

It is a decade since Professors David Milner and Richard Beard produced data to show that 39% of babies born at 25 weeks' gestation and 16% of those born at 24 weeks' gestation were surviving in the major neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in Britain.' Translated into birth weight, this and other contemporaneous data suggested that at least 20-30% of babies weighing 600-800 g were surviving (V Y H Yu, unpublished data).2 3 With survival figures like that it was doubtful, even in 1982, whether the title of this article was a justifiable question. With the considerable improvements in neonatal care in the subsequent decade, I hope to show that such a question is now totally unacceptable. In the past 12 months several papers have been published adding strength to this view as they address not only the number of babies surviving at different birth weights and gestations, but also give data on the neurological sequelae in those who survive.