Campaign needed to cut risk of babies born prematurely

A consultant neonatologist with 30 years experience has called for a public health campaign designed to reduce the risk of babies being born prematurely.

Professor Anthony Ryan, consultant neonatologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH), said the cost of prematurity can be “huge for parents if the baby survives or if the baby dies”, as well as “huge for society” and that “we should be looking at ways of reducing it”.

“It is not something accidental, I think it is something that can be tackled if we look at the risks,” Prof Ryan said. These included late maternal age, infection, obesity, multiple birth, previous miscarriage/preterm delivery and smoking during pregnancy, as outlined in an information leaflet, launched today by the Irish Neonatal Health Alliance (INHA) at their medical symposium in Dublin, which Prof Ryan will speak at.

Prof Ryan said a combination of technological developments and positive changes in emotional care of families and babies had greatly improved survival rates of premature babies since he first worked in the area of neonatal care.

“When I started in the Coombe, the [neonatal] units were bright, noisy, the radio was playing, staff were having a good time. The belief was if the staff are happy, the babies are happy. And babies were handled all the time for nappy changing and taking bloods etc, maybe 200 times in 24 hours.”

Research has since shown it’s better for baby to keep handling to a minimum and that a quiet and calm environment is also beneficial. The neonatal environment is now utterly changed, Prof Ryan said.

They had also moved from “stereotypical care to individualised care” and parents were more involved, encouraged to offer skin-to-skin contact. But while survival rates for premature babies had improved, and four out of five babies born at 25 weeks+ had a normal neurological outcome, the prospect of disability in those born at 23/24 weeks remained much the same. However with the right follow-up and resources, this did not necessarily mean poor quality of life, Prof Ryan said.

For more on the INHA ‘10 things to know’ information guide on prematurity, log onto INHA.ie