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Importance: During the past decade, clinical guidance about the provision of intensive care for infants born at 22 weeks' gestation has changed. The impact of these changes on neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) resource utilization is unknown.
Objective: To characterize recent trends in NICU resource utilization for infants born at 22 weeks' gestation compared with other extremely preterm infants (≤28 weeks' gestation) and other NICU-admitted infants.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This is a serial cross-sectional study of 137 continuously participating NICUs in 29 US states from January 1, 2008, through December 31, 2021. Participants included infants admitted to the NICU. Data analysis was performed from October 2022 to August 2023.
Exposures: Year and gestational age at birth.
Main Outcomes And Measures: Measures of resource utilization included NICU admissions, NICU bed-days, and ventilator-days.
Results: Of 825 112 infants admitted from 2008 to 2021, 60 944 were extremely preterm and 872 (466 [53.4%] male; 18 [2.1%] Asian; 318 [36.5%] Black non-Hispanic; 218 [25.0%] Hispanic; 232 [26.6%] White non-Hispanic; 86 [9.8%] other or unknown) were born at 22 weeks' gestation. NICU admissions at 22 weeks' gestation increased by 388%, from 5.7 per 1000 extremely preterm admissions in 2008 to 2009 to 27.8 per 1000 extremely preterm admissions in 2020 to 2021. The number of NICU admissions remained stable before the publication of updated clinical guidance in 2014 to 2016 and substantially increased thereafter. During the study period, bed-days for infants born at 22 weeks increased by 732%, from 2.5 per 1000 to 20.8 per 1000 extremely preterm NICU bed-days; ventilator-days increased by 946%, from 5.0 per 1000 to 52.3 per 1000 extremely preterm ventilator-days. The proportion of NICUs admitting infants born at 22 weeks increased from 22.6% to 45.3%. Increases in NICU resource utilization during the period were also observed for infants born at less than 22 and at 23 weeks but not for other gestational ages. In 2020 to 2021, infants born at less than or equal to 23 weeks' gestation comprised 1 in 117 NICU admissions, 1 in 34 of all NICU bed-days, and 1 in 6 of all ventilator-days.
Conclusions And Relevance: In this serial cross-sectional study of 137 US NICUs from 2008 to 2021, an increasing share of resources in US NICUs was allocated to infants born at 22 weeks' gestation, corresponding with changes in national clinical guidance.
