Survival Rate in Very Low Birth Weight Infants

Purpose:We observed changes in the outcome of very low birth weight infants(VLBWI) admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit(NICU) of Dankook University Hospital(DKUH) in the last six years. Methods:The distribution of birth weight and gestational age, survival rate, neonatal complications, and causes of death for 228 VLBWI who had been admitted to DKUH from 1st January 1997 to 31th December 2002, were observed by retrospective review of medical records. We compared the above variables between period I(1997-1999) and period II(2000-2002). Results:The mean birth weight, mean gestational age, gender ratio, rate of inborn infants, and other perinatal and obstetric variables were not significantly different between the two periods, except for the rate of infants with Apgar scores less than 4 at 5 min. The survival rate of VLBWI significantly increased from period I(81.0%) to period II(85.4%)(P