Thanks to the great advances in medicine, the life expectancy of premature babies is increasing. We have learned incredible stories of extremely young babies who have survived with 22 weeks of gestation or little else.
Of course not all babies get it. The risks of being born too early are very high, but it is encouraging to know that extremely premature children have a 70% chance of survival if they manage to overcome birth. This was just proved by Swedish researchers.
They have studied 1,000 babies born between the 22nd and 26th week of gestation. Of them, 707 were born alive and 34 dead. Of those born alive, 70% have managed to survive at least one year.
Objective figures indicate that the average perinatal death rate was 45%, from 93% in the group of babies born at 22 weeks to 24% in that of those born at week 26.
According to experts, from a medical point of view, the longer life expectancy is due to the medicines used to delay the delivery, the drugs used to develop the baby's lungs and steroids.
The truth is that there are more and more births of premature babies, largely because women increasingly delay the age of being mothers resulting in fertility treatments with a higher rate of multiple pregnancies which favors deliveries before term . But not only that. Also influenced by factors such as stress, environmental pollution, rhythm of life, food, etc.
Of course it is good news that more extreme premature babies survive and I think it is always worth fighting to get them through, but due to the consequences that can lead to being born with such anticipation, in addition to improving the life expectancies of the little ones they should try Prevent premature births.
