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Deliveries at extreme prematurity: outcomes, approaches, institutional variation, and uncertainty
Bonnie H Arzuaga1, Christy L Cummings
1Division of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Insights
Medical decision-making for extremely premature births is complex. Emerging guidelines and shared decision-making can improve care, but challenges like practice variation and data limitations persist.
Area of Science:
- Neonatalogy
- Perinatal Medicine
- Medical Ethics
Background:
- Medical decision-making for extremely premature births presents significant challenges for families and healthcare providers.
- Concerns exist regarding practice variations, selection bias, and limitations in outcomes data for this vulnerable population.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review recent literature on deliveries at extreme prematurity.
- Focus on outcomes, clinical approaches, and institutional variations in care.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of recent studies on extreme prematurity.
- Analysis of outcomes data, clinical practices, and institutional variations.
Main Results:
- Emerging evidence-based guidelines and protocols show potential to improve care and outcomes at lower gestational ages.
- Significant practice variation, selection bias, and methodological limitations in outcomes data reporting are evident.
Conclusions:
- Shared decision-making, prioritizing parental values, is crucial for counseling at extreme prematurity.
- Addressing limitations in counseling, including bias and data inaccuracies, is essential.
- Standardized perinatal outcome reporting and enhanced provider communication skills are needed.
Purpose Of Review:
Medical decision making and practices surrounding extremely premature birth remains challenging for parents and care providers alike. Recently, concerns have been raised regarding wide practice variation, selection bias, and the limitations of outcomes data in this population. The purpose of this review is to summarize the recent literature relevant to deliveries at extreme prematurity with a focus on outcomes, approaches, and institutional variation.
Recent Findings:
Newer data suggest that evidence-based clinical guidelines and protocols for both pregnant women and infants at extreme prematurity are emerging and may improve care and outcomes at lower gestational ages. It has also been recently shown that wide practice variation, selection bias, and methodological limitations of outcomes data reporting with respect to deliveries at extreme prematurity exist.
Summary:
Counseling at extreme prematurity should prioritize eliciting parental values and preferences with the goal of personalized shared decision-making. Providers should recognize limitations in counseling families at extreme prematurity, including selection bias, institutional variation, outcomes inaccuracies, prognostic uncertainty, and implicit biases. Standardized reporting of perinatal outcomes should be developed to help alleviate current outcomes misrepresentations and improve counseling at extreme prematurity. Education for providers in advanced communication skills is needed when counseling at extreme prematurity.
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