A Multicenter Study of Preterm Birth Weight and Gestational Age-Specific Neonatal Survival Rate and Causes of Death / 대한주산의학회잡지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: This multi-institutional study aims to investigate the survival rate of premature infants and the causes of death according to gestational age and birth weight during the past three years. METHODS: This study retrospectively examined medical records of 1,400 premature infants who were born at 23 to 34 weeks gestation and were hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit of seven hospitals from 2004 to 2006. Gestational age, birth weight, gender, plurality, survival rate, and cause of death were examined, and the survival rate was measured according to gestational age and birth weight. RESULTS: The average gestational age and the average birth weight of the subjects was 31+/-1.8 weeks and 1,775+/-530 g, respectively. The survival rate showed no difference by gender, plurality and years. The survival rate of very premature babies, low birth weight infants, very low birth weight infants, and extremely low birth weight infants were 87.6%, 93.8%, 83.2%, and 62.7% respectively. Causes of death were the complications of prematurity (83.8%), congenital anomalies (15.2%), birth asphyxia (5.0%) and others (2.5%). The survival rate increased significantly according to the gestational age and also by the birth weight. CONCLUSIONS: Our data do not represent of the survival rate and the causes of death in Korea. However, our data may reflect the common survival rate and the causes of death in Korean NICU, because the 7 hospitals participated in this study were common facilities and manpower in Korea.