Neonatology on the Web: Care and Feeding of Premature - Morse

Viability. -There are very few authentic cases of the survival of infants born before the twenty-seventh or twenty-eight week of pregnancy, although Home's case, which was supposed to have been born in the eighteenth week, was alive and well at nine years. Very few survive any length of time if the weight is under two pounds or the length less than thirteen inches. Oberwarth recently reported a case, and collected seven others from literature, however, in which the weight was less than two pounds, which lived months or years. Home's case, just referred to, measured but eight inches. It is not of much practical importance, except for medicolegal reasons, however, to know the exact age of the premature infant. No matter how young it is, how little its weight and length, or how poor its prospects of survival,