Changes in Neonatal Epidemiology during the Last 3 Decades in Korea

ABSTRACT

Neonatal intensive care units have been present in Korea since the past 30 years, after their introduction in the 1980s. Neonatal and infant mortality rates have remarkably reduced with improvement in the survival rates of high-risk infants such as very-low-birth-weight infants and early preterm infants, as a result of recent advance in therapeutic modalities, equipment, and support systems. It may be useful to summarize the statistical changes that have occurred over the past 30 years in neonatal outcomes with respect to neonatal epidemiology. The present review aims to summarize these outcomes with respect to neonatal epidemiology, such as analysis of the number of births; crude birth rate; incidence of preterm-birth, multiple-birth, and low-birth-weight infants; neonatal and infant mortality; survival rate and morbidity of very-low-birth-weight-infants; and changes in neonatal causes of death. This review is intended to contribute to further development in neonatal intensive care as well as normal nursery care by summarizing the the historical neonatal epidemiologic data for the last 3 decades in Korea.