OBJECTIVE: To determine the sound environment of preterm infants cared for in the NICU and to test the hypothesis that infants exposed to more adult language will make more vocalizations. METHODS: This was a prospective cohort study of 36 infants who had a birth weight of 1250 g. Sixteen-hour recordings of the infant sound environment were made in the NICU from a digital language processor at 3...

OBJECTIVE To determine the sound environment of preterm infants cared for in the NICU and to test the hypothesis that infants exposed to more adult language will make more vocalizations. METHODS This was a prospective cohort study of 36 infants who had a birth weight of ≤1250 g. Sixteen-hour recordings of the infant sound environment were made in the NICU from a digital language processor at ...

BACKGROUND Growing literature on negative childhood stress emphasizes the need to understand cortisol values from varying biomarker samples. OBJECTIVE This work aimed to examine cortisol samples for usability, associations, and individual stability in neonates. SUBJECTS The sample consisted of preterm infants (n=31). MATERIALS AND METHODS Analyses on cortisol collected from cord blood and...

BACKGROUND A virtual object approaching on a collision course will elicit defensive blinking in infants. Previous research has shown that when precisely timing their blinks, full-term infants shift from using a strategy based on visual angle/angular velocity to a strategy based on time between 22 and 30 weeks of age. AIM To investigate which timing strategy preterm infants use to determine wh...

We describe how a gender specialist team managed the case of a disorder of sex development in a preterm infant where definitive diagnosis and gender assignment were delayed due to complications of prematurity, anemia, and severe intrauterine growth restriction.

The concentrations of D-dimers (the D fragments of fibrinogen) were measured in blood from 15 preterm infants, and 45 born at full term, to establish normal ranges. The adult normal range is less than 0.25 mg/l; 31 of the 60 infants (52%) had values less than 0.25 mg/l, in 16 (27%) they were 0.25-0.5, in eight (13%) 0.5-1, in three (5%) 1-2, and in two (3%) 2-4. D-dimer concentrations measured ...

In Cambridge, between 1979 and 1988, the prevalence of low gestation (less than 37 or less than 33 weeks) was not increased in 362 children under 6 years presenting to casualty with fractures compared with that in 362 children presenting without fractures or in all inborn surviving babies. These data are relevant to the assessment of suspected child abuse after preterm birth.

Achieving appropriate growth and nutrient accretion of preterm and low birth weight (LBW) infants is often difficult during hospitalization because of metabolic and gastrointestinal immaturity and other complicating medical conditions. Advances in the care of preterm-LBW infants, including improved nutrition, have reduced mortality rates for these infants from 9.6 to 6.2% from 1983 to 1997. The...

A lthough studies of oral sucrose solution for procedure related pain in neonates have been subjected to a meta-analysis and a systematic review, several problems have been noted, and only one small trial focused on the role of oral sucrose for preterm venepuncture. We therefore performed a randomised, double blinded, placebo controlled, crossover trial of 25% sucrose solution in healthy preter...