"Percorso Giacomo": An Italian Innovative Service of Perinatal Palliative Care.

The perspective proposed by this article will focus on perinatal palliative care as a strategy for improving the quality of life of neonates with life-limiting conditions when extending the patient's life is no longer the goal of care. This manuscript reports the creation of an innovative program of perinatal palliative care called "Percorso Giacomo" (Giacomo's Pathway) at Sant'Orsola Hospital in Bologna, Italy in 2013. Key features include interdisciplinary collaboration between professionals from obstetrics, neonatology and other specialties aiming to reach the most detailed fetal and neonatal diagnosis and prognosis; communication and engagement with the family to discuss goals of care and prepare a birthing plan that follows the family's desires and expectations; and personalized care to achieve comfort for each newborn and support for families according to their social, cultural, and religious backgrounds.

Magnitude Comparisons, Number Knowledge and Calculation in VeryPreterm Children and Children With Specific Learning Disability: A Cross-Population Study Using Eye-Tracking.

Difficulties in mathematics have been described in very preterm children, but their origins are not well understood and may differ from other populations with specific learning disability. Very preterm children, children with learning disability, and typically developing children were compared in mathematics skills, using standardized tools, experimental tasks, and eye-tracker measures. We assessed symbolic and nonsymbolic magnitude comparisons, number knowledge, calculation, as well as cognitive skills of 103 Italian-speaking fourth and fifth graders.

Cerebral Oxygenation and Autoregulation in Very Preterm Infants Developing IVH During the Transitional Period: A Pilot Study.

The transitional period, defined as the first 72 h after preterm birth, is often characterized by a significant hemodynamic instability, which represents an important risk factor for such neurological complications of prematurity as intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH). The impairment of cerebral autoregulation plays a key role in the pathogenesis of IVH, whose incidence is highest during the transitional period. This pilot study aimed to evaluate whether patterns of cerebral autoregulation and oxygenation differ in relation to IVH development in very preterm infants during the transitional period.

Do 6-Month Motor Skills Have Cascading Effects on 12-Month Motor and Cognitive Development in Extremely Preterm and Full-Term Infants?

In this study, we analyzed whether 6-month gross and fine motor skills were related to 12-month gross and fine motor skills and cognitive development, controlling for 6-month cognitive skills, and neonatal status (extremely low gestational age ELGA ≤ 28 weeks vs. full-term FT ≥ 37 weeks). We also investigated, at 6 months, predictive indexes for motor and cognitive delay at 12-months.

Parechovirus infection causing sepsis-like illness in newborns: a NICU approach.

Human parechovirus (HpeV) is an important emerging infection in young infants, able to cause sepsis-like disease and meningoencephalitis, especially in newborns. Among the 19 identified genotypes, HPeV1, 3 and 6 are the most common types involved in human infections; HPeV3 is the type mainly responsible for neonatal infections and for infections involving the central nervous system. Signs and symptoms overlap with those of a bacterial infection and patients are usually treated with broad spectrum antibiotics.