Infants born between 34 0/7 and 36 6/7 weeks of gestational age (so-called late preterm infants) present some challenges to the clinician and to both hospital and public health systems. Foreword.

摘要

Infants born between 34 0/7 and 36 6/7 weeks of gestational age (so-called late pre-term infants) present some challenges to the clinician and to both hospital and public health systems. As described in detail in this month's article by Drs. Mally, Bailey, and Hendricks-Munoz, while most of these babies ultimately do very well, their risks for morbidity across a wide range of clinical issues are higher that those of full-term infants. Since late preterm infants represent a noticeable percentage (9%) of all births in the USA, even small increases in their clinical risk have large impacts at the population level. Studies have well documented that the risks increase steadily as gestational age declines from 40 to 34 weeks. We need to remind ourselves that even at 37-38 weeks gestational age, infants are at higher risk when compared with infants at 39-40 weeks of gestation.