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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.

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  1. Re:Is the Story Real? by xaxa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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."