Changes in the Delivery Room Care of the Extremely Small Infant (<750 G)

Abstract

Advances in perinatal care have been accompanied by improved survival among infants born in the middle to late second trimester, who were previously considered nonviable. This development has led to the spurious assumption that life can be sustained in live-born infants irrespective of gestational age or birth weight. Since pessimism prevails in the few reports on later outcomes among these very small and immature infants, the indiscriminate initiation of intensive care raises many philosophical, ethical, and economic questions.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10} Despite many reviews with titles such as "How Small Is Too Small?,"¹¹ "What Is the Lower Limit of Viability?,"¹² and "Where and . . .