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Doctors Save Premature Baby Using Sandwich Bag
Born 14 weeks early, Lexi Lacey owes her life to some MacGyver inspired doctors and a sandwich bag. Lexi was so small at birth that even the tiniest insulating jacket was too big, but she fit into a plastic sandwich bag nicely. ''The doctors told us they had never known a baby born as prematurely as Lexi survive. She was so tiny the only thing they had to keep her body temperature warm was a sandwich bag from the hospital canteen — it's incredible to think that saved her life," says her mom.
My twin girls were born at 31 weeks and required a stay in NICU. I'm laughing. You should try it, you'll live longer.
Perhaps you should read the article: "Worcestershire Royal Hospital only has the facilities to care for premature babies born from 28 weeks onwards and doctors wanted to transfer her to a specialist unit at Birmingham's Heartlands Hospital but there wasn't time."
If more American hospitals are equipped to deal with babies born earlier than this that could explain a difference in survival rates, but I don't know if that's the case.
Note that Sweden and Germany count the birth rate in the same way as the USA, but do better. At the end of this article are some survival results for full-term births. On Wikipedia there's the 5-year survival rate.
The oft-cited report about infant mortality in the US leaves out some important factors -- namely that socio-economic diversity in the US, and racial heterogenoy correlate with and explain some of our increased infant mortality.
You could say the same about Britain. (From the article, we know this is a teenage (17) mother with an older (24) father, they aren't married, and they all have stereotypical working-class names.)
Finally, we measure mortality much differently here than do most other places.
Yet your own government (see here) "concluded, however, that the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States’ relatively low international ranking."
Right. So in the US there are levels of NICU facilities (there are 3, i believe), and it works similarly in that a level foo facilitity cannot really support a child born earlier than a certain gestational age, or with certain difficulties.
The place our children stayed was a "we can do anything" level facility, and one of the reasons it had a helipad is that they went and picked up babies from all over the state that couldn't be handled in the facilities they were in. Many of the nurses that worked on my kids had special "FLIGHT NURSE" badges that basically meant they were trained to keep 20-something week infants alive in a bumpy helicopter.
There was also a special flight-rated isolette unit (incubator + semi-sealed environment with respiration support) parked in the lobby of the NICU area.
So how it would work is that the chopper from my town was usually en-route as the mom was going through pre-delivery, and the staff would pick mom and baby up and bring them back.
Regarding the demographic issue.. i saw lots of families come in (and out) of the NICU that didn't appear, from my prejudicial eyes, to be in a position to pay the bill. Their children were treated the same way by the same people.
Part of the issue is that pre-devliery care breaks down across economic strata, and in the US, there is a high correlation to racial demographics. If you look at the CDC report, you see that aggregately, african american babies have worse outcomes than white babies in the USA, who are marginally worse than hispanic babies. Part of that is socio-economic, and part of it appears to be genetics. The NICU nurses are very aware of which genders and which races seem to, correcting for other factors, appear to mature and survive at which rates. Premature Girls, as a rule, mature faster than boys, and our boy-girl twins, our daughter was much stronger and healthier from the get go than our son.
None of this explains why the doctors would claim they had never seen a 1lb 26 week baby "survive". 26 weekers regularly survive. It may have been a mischaracterization of what was said by the patient.
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My wife was born that size/premature, so it happens from time to time.
...if you are wealthy.
Please enlighten me. Perhaps this was meant tongue-in-cheek. On this side of the pond we can deduce precisely nothing from someone's name regarding class, socio-economic niche, etc. Are you suggesting that \caste\ class distinction is still divided along familial lines over there? I mean, really? You guys still do that?
There's a third option which you neglect: it's a stupid newspaper article full of hyperbole, from which you would be really silly to draw sweeping conclusions about the whole of neonatal care in the UK. Also, if you look on page 34 of this report, it seems like the WHO don't agree with your figures, at least for 2006.