Guidelines Help Save Babies Born Extremely Early

New guidelines designed to care for extremely premature babies, also known as small babies - those born around four months early, are showing remarkable results by helping more of these babies survive than ever before.

Just a generation ago, the survival rate for small babies was only around 10 percent, “but our rates of survival continue to go up,” said Edward Shepherd, MD, section chief of Neonatology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “In 2011, our rate of survival was 84 percent, which suggests that the changes we made are long-lasting and likely to be sustained.”