By Dr. Ellen Bendel-Stenzel
As the Star Tribune so beautifully illustrated with its Thanksgiving cover story, “Home After 98 Days In Preemie Land,” the issue of prematurity is a heart-wrenching and persistent challenge for doctors and parents-to-be. Preterm birth can, and does, affect every race, ethnicity, religion, age, socioeconomic status and demographic.
Here in the Upper Midwest, more than 200,000 babies are born every year. And about 22,000 of those babies or little more than 10 percent are born premature. However, as a preterm infant, you couldn’t ask to be born in a better place than Minnesota. We have some of the highest survival rates in the world, and yet we received a “B” on the March of Dimes 2012 Premature Birth Report Card. Why? Because even though an infant born beyond 28 weeks gestation, or 7 months of pregnancy, has a nearly 100 percent chance of survival, these infants still remain at risk for respiratory problems, feeding issues, developmental delays and behavioral and social disabilities.
Unfortunately, the amazing medical progress we’ve made over the past 25 years, which lead to the improved outcomes for so many premature infants, has begun to plateau. Now we as health care providers need to take the lead and drive future improvements.
There will always be high-risk pregnancies, and ensuring the best outcomes for these scenarios is not dependent upon reducing the prematurity rate alone. We need to be proactive and provide optimal care to both mother and baby, so that we can decrease the incidence of prematurity and improve the outcomes of those born early or with complex medical conditions. In short, we need to address the needs of the infant long before a mother’s due date.
In early February of next year, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and Abbott Northwestern Hospital will open The Mother Baby Center in Minneapolis. It will be the first of its kind in the Upper Midwest, and one of only a few in the nation where mother-baby care is fully integrated. This new Center will bring together maternal and infant specialists, with the understanding that every pregnancy has the potential to be high risk.
With a proactive approach, the goal is clear: optimize care from conception to delivery. This means the sharing of information across all nine months of the pregnancy whenever possible. It means providing quick access to specialists when concerns for the health of either the mother or baby arise. It means collecting data to look at the root cause of prematurity in our own community. It means collaborating in clinical trials that start at the first obstetrical visit and end in the pediatrician’s office at school age follow-up. And it means continuing to incorporate the latest technologies and therapies on the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU), while simultaneously measuring their effects and proving their validity.
While simple in theory, these are lofty goals that are difficult to implement and execute, but are well worth the effort. As physicians we must continue to set the bar high and help moms achieve term delivery whenever possible, while at the same time improve the care for the babies that are born early. In doing so, we’ll create a recipe for success that will provide enormous benefits to Minnesota babies and families.
Dr. Bendel-Stenzel is a neonatologist and co-director of clinical research for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis.