The healthcare needs of preterm and extremely premature babies in Australia-assessing the long-term health service use and costs with a data linkage cohort study.

The health conditions associated with extreme prematurity will likely require life-long treatment and management. As such, planning for the provision of healthcare services is essential in order to maximise their long-term well-being. We sought to quantify the use of healthcare services and the associated costs for extremely premature babies compared to preterm and term babies in Australia using a whole-of-population linked administrative dataset.

Selection Bias and Outcomes for Preterm Neonates.

Background: Reported survival and neurodevelopmental outcomes at 23 weeks' gestation are based on the infants admitted to NICUs. In this study, we aim to describe the association between clinical characteristics and admission to NICU at 23, 24 and 25 weeks' gestation.

Methods: Cohort data from 2 national databases enabled comparison of the clinical characteristics all Australian births and all NICU admissions during 2010-2013 at 23, 24, and 25 weeks' gestation.

Respiratory hospitalisation of infants supplemented with docosahexaenoic acid as preterm neonates.

Aim: To determine the effect of neonatal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation in preterm infants on later respiratory-related hospitalisations.

Methods: We enrolled 657 infants in a multicentre, randomised, controlled trial designed to study the long-term efficacy of higher dose dietary DHA in infants born <33 weeks' gestation. Treatment was with high DHA (∼1%) compared with standard DHA (∼0.