Survival Rate in Very Low Birth Weight Infants

Cho, Jae Ju; Lee, Soon Bum; Park, Woo Sung; Chang, Young Pyo

Abstract

PURPOSE
We observed changes in the outcome of very low birth weight infants(VLBWI) admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit(NICU) of Dankook University Hospital(DKUH) in the last six years.
METHODS
The distribution of birth weight and gestational age, survival rate, neonatal complications, and causes of death for 228 VLBWI who had been admitted to DKUH from 1st January 1997 to 31th December 2002, were observed by retrospective review of medical records. We compared the above variables between period I(1997-1999) and period II(2000-2002).
RESULTS
The mean birth weight, mean gestational age, gender ratio, rate of inborn infants, and other perinatal and obstetric variables were not significantly different between the two periods, except for the rate of infants with Apgar scores less than 4 at 5 min. The survival rate of VLBWI significantly increased from period I(81.0%) to period II(85.4%)(P<0.05). Major neonatal complications of VLBWI were respiratory distress syndrome, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, retinopathy of prematurity, necrotizing enterocolitis, periventricular leukomalasia and intraventricular hemorrhage. The most common cause of death in VLBWI was pulmonary hemorrhage, and the age of death was mostly less than seven days after birth.
CONCLUSION
The survival rate of VLBWI who had been admitted to the NICU of DKUH was increased without any increase in major complications, and this increase(4.4%) in survival rate was mainly from the increase in survival rate of infants with birth weights of less than 1,000 gm and gestational ages of less than 28 weeks.