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Strategies for getting preterm infants home earlier

¹ St Michael’s Hospital, Bristol, UK
² Southmead Hospital, Bristol, UK

Correspondence to:
Dr A Leaf, Consultant Neonatologist, Southmead Hospital, Bristol BS10 5NB, UK; Alison.leaf@nbt.nhs.uk

Accepted for publication 12 October 2007

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Neonatal intensive and special care is an expensive and limited health resource. Having a child in hospital is stressful and inconvenient for families, and may result in unbudgeted costs and loss of income; the home environment is most appropriate for normal infant development. For these reasons it is important that babies are discharged from neonatal units as early as is safely possible. Preterm infants take up the majority of neonatal hospital bed-days and our review will focus on this population.

There are three main parameters to consider: physiological maturity, parental readiness and home environment, and administrative/bureaucratic infrastructure. In a critical review of early discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for very-low-birthweight (VLBW) infants, Merritt et al¹ summarised what has previously been published about discharge criteria. For physiological maturity, most would agree that adequate suckling to maintain weight gain, respiratory stability with freedom from apnoea, and ability to maintain . . . [Full text of this article]