(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Each year, 40,000 babies are born so prematurely that parents and doctors must make a decision whether or not to provide the infant with medical intervention to try to save it’s life. These decisions are made based on the projected chance of survival for the infant -- which now is more accurate than ever thanks to new research.

A baby born between the 22nd week and 25th week of pregnancy is categorized as an extremely low birth weight baby. These infants weigh less than 2.2 pounds at birth. Many of these babies die soon after birth, others grow up to live full, unaffected lives and the rest experience some degree of life long disability ranging from minor hearing loss to cerebral palsy.

Predicting an extremely low birth weight baby’s chance of survival determines whether he or she should receive intensive medical treatment that can be painful and invasive if the baby’s chance of survival is high, or be given gentle care to insure comfort if the baby’s chances of survival are slim. In the past, these decisions were based mostly on gestational age. A baby born in the 22nd week would normally be given comfort care, while a baby born in the 25th week would be given intensive care.
 

Now, researchers have come up with a set of criteria to better determine the chances of survival for the tiniest of babies. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development studied 4,000 infants born during the 22nd through the 25th week of pregnancy and analyzed which factors most heavily influenced survival.

In addition to gestational age, the factors they found to be the best indicators of survival were the sex of the baby (females have better survival rates), birth weight, whether the baby was a single baby or one of two or more infants born (single babies are better fit for survival) and whether or not the mother was given medication during her pregnancy to stimulate the development of the baby’s lungs. Race was found to play no apparent role in the survival of extremely low birth weight babies.

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, 2008;358:1672-1681