A study into the disparities between the perceived and true outcomes of infants born at 23-25 weeks’ gestation has led to the development of a smart phone app.
NIC-PREDICT may help clinicians accurately predict outcomes in babies born extremely preterm (less than 28 weeks’ gestation). It is an easy to use, readily available digital tool designed to estimate (PREDICT) outcomes for individual babies if they are offered neonatal intensive care (NIC) after birth.
Lead researcher Dr Rosemarie Boland and her team at the Women’s developed the tool after identifying that most clinicians had been seriously underestimating the survival chances of extremely preterm babies and overestimating the risk of major disability in surviving children.
“Parents facing the unexpected extremely early birth of their baby need accurate, up-to-date information about potential outcomes,” Dr Boland said.
“This helps them make life and death decisions about providing active or palliative care for their baby at birth.”
The researchers developed a scenario-based survey using six real-life examples of babies born at 23, 24 and 25 weeks of pregnancy, to determine whether clinicians caring for pregnant women and extremely preterm babies had accurate perceptions of infant outcomes.
They surveyed 165 clinicians - nurses, midwives, obstetricians, neonatologists and paediatricians from tertiary and non-tertiary maternity hospitals over three months.
Participants were asked to estimate the chances of each baby’s survival to one year if active care was provided from birth, and the risk of each baby surviving with major disability to eight years.
“The study indicated the urgent need for the NIC-PREDICT tool, which will help clinicians accurately predict the need for neonatal intensive care treatment for these vulnerable babies now and into the future,” Dr Boland said.
This research was published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.