Attitudes of Parents and Health Care Workers to Major Surgery for High-Risk Preterm Infants.

Objectives: To assess preferences of health care workers (HCWs) and parents of term and preterm infants to adverse health outcomes, and how perceived surgical mortality influences decision-making.

Study Design: A total of 536 participants (157 HCWs, 201 parents of term infants, and 178 parents of preterm infants) were recruited to take part in a structured interview. Preferences related to treatment of a critically ill preterm infant with necrotizing enterocolitis were measured by health state rank permutation analysis and pivotal risk analysis.

Early diagnosis of intra-abdominal inflammation and sepsis by neutrophil CD64 expression in newborns.

Background: Newborn infants with intra-abdominal inflammation/sepsis often present with nonspecific signs in the early stages of the disease, but can rapidly develop life-threatening complications. A reliable 'early' biomarker would be invaluable.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of neutrophil CD64 as an 'early' biomarker of intra-abdominal inflammation/sepsis.

Attitudes toward neonatal intensive care treatment of preterm infants with a high risk of developing long-term disabilities.

Objectives: To assess (1) the differences in attitudes toward disabilities of 3 groups of subjects involved in neonatal care decision-making: health care workers, mothers of term infants, and parents of preterm infants, and (2) the impact of subject characteristics on these attitudes including parental education level, religion, and severity of disability.

Methods: Five hundred seventy-eight subjects were interviewed, of whom 135 were health care workers, 155 were mothers of term infants, and 288 were parents of preterm infants. We assessed between-group differences of the (1) health state ranking permutations, (2) proportion of subjects willing to save the infant at all costs, (3) pivotal risks of each group to the 5 health states comprising varying combinations of mental, physical, and social disabilities, and (4) impact of personal characteristics on decision-making.

A longitudinal study to establish the normative value and to evaluate perinatal factors affecting intraocular pressure in preterm infants.

Purpose: To establish a normative range of intraocular pressure (IOP) in preterm infants and to identify important perinatal factors that could affect the IOP during the early weeks of neonatal life.

Methods: The IOP of 104 preterm infants, with a median (interquartile range) gestational age of 29.8 (28.

Flexible modeling via a hybrid estimation scheme in generalized mixed models for longitudinal data.

To circumvent the computational complexity of likelihood inference in generalized mixed models that assume linear or more general additive regression models of covariate effects, Laplace's approximations to multiple integrals in the likelihood have been commonly used without addressing the issue of adequacy of the approximations for individuals with sparse observations. In this article, we propose a hybrid estimation scheme to address this issue. The likelihoods for subjects with sparse observations use Monte Carlo approximations involving importance sampling, while Laplace's approximation is used for the likelihoods of other subjects that satisfy a certain diagnostic check on the adequacy of Laplace's approximation.