International Perspectives

Abstract

With vastly improved survival in preterm newborns over the past few decades and the realization that the scope for further improvements in the survival rates of extremely preterm infants is becoming more limited, a greater emphasis is being placed on achieving good perinatal outcomes in the longer-term survivors. There has also been a growing recognition for the importance of reporting long-term outcomes for all high-risk infants as a reflection of neonatal service provision and that this should become a benchmark against which performance of neonatal units can be assessed. Traditionally, neurodevelopmental outcomes at 18 months or 2 years have been used as a measure, but the lack of a uniform approach in reporting such outcomes has made it difficult to compare the quality of different perinatal services. The British Association of Perinatal Medicine and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have led the way in devising a uniform and pragmatic approach to report health status at 2 years as part of neonatal service provision in the United Kingdom. Once implemented, this should provide a robust infrastructure for auditing care across the United Kingdom and acquisition of 2-year outcome data for perinatal research as well.