Evaluating preterm care across Europe using the eNewborn European Network database

Area of Science:

• Neonatal research
• Perinatal epidemiology
• Clinical benchmarking

Background:

• Repeated data collection hinders research efficiency.
• The European eNewborn benchmarking programme captures valuable data.
• Leveraging existing data can streamline studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the utility of data from the European eNewborn programme.
• To explore associations between delivery room care, Apgar scores, and infant outcomes.
• To estimate the time required to detect significant changes in mortality and bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD).

Main Methods:

• Analysis of data from 39,529 live-births (22-31 weeks gestational age or ≤1500g).
• Investigated relationships between delivery care, Apgar scores, and mortality/BPD.
• Calculated time to detect clinically relevant outcome changes for individual countries and the network.

Main Results:

• Mortality rates: early neonatal 3.90%, neonatal 6.00%, in-hospital 7.57%.
• Decreasing gestational age, low Apgar scores, and other factors increased mortality risk.
• Detecting changes in outcomes for very preterm infants (23-25 weeks GA) could take years for individual countries, versus 1 year for the entire network.

Conclusions:

• The eNewborn platform enhances benchmarking, quality control, and research efficiency.
• Centralized data collection accelerates the identification of trends and intervention effectiveness.
• The programme facilitates more robust and timely neonatal research.