The impact of prematurity goes far beyond developmental and medical problems.  Often times, it has an enormous financial impact on families that can last years into the future.  Aside from the medical costs of a NICU hospitalization, other financial burdens include meals, parking and gas while visiting your baby in the NICU, and lost days at work and lost jobs due to prolonged hospital stays.  After the NICU, physician, therapy and pharmacy copays, as well as lost income can continue to be a problem.  I’ve also read that parents of preemies also suffer from a higher than average divorce rate, either adding to, or resulting from financial problems.

I’d love to hear from anyone and everyone about any financial resources you’ve found to help defray medical costs or other expenses for your preemie.  Anything about SSI requirements, medicaid spend downs, or other programs would be appreciated.  All relevant comments will compiled into an article for the site.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help!

-Kristie

There has been a lot of discussion among preemie communities online about the diagnosis of learning problems and other disabilities in previously “normal” preemies once they start school. While parents were once (and sometimes still) told that their preemies would “catch up by age two,” ongoing research into the longterm consequences of prematurity have increasingly shown that this isn’t necessarily the case. Now, a new study published online in the journal Brain has shown increasing problems found on neuropsychiatric testing in teenage preemies.

The research looked at former preemies born at less than 33 weeks gestation, and compared them to their term peers. Teens received MRIs and neuropsychiatric evaluations* twice, at around 15 and 18 years-of-age. The study results showed (more…)

A study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at preemies born at gestational ages between 22 weeks 0 days and 25 weeks 6 days, and tried to find factors which would favor survival and impairment free survival. The study included 4446 infants, 83% of whom (3702) received intensive care in the form of mechanical ventilation (i.e. they were placed on a ventilator). At the time of follow-up at 18-22 months, 49% of the study infants had died.

Of the babies studied, 73% had either died or were neurodevelopmentally “impaired” at 18-22 mos. (more…)

Parents of preemies are left with a lot of unknowns when their babies leave the neonatal intensive care unit. Will they stay healthy? grow well? develop normally? The use of MRI to look for evidence of damage in preemies’ brains has become increasingly common, yet we still know very little about what MRI abnormalities mean for as far as lonterm developmental outcomes are concerned.

A recent study published online in the journal Pediatrics has shed some light on the meaning of certain brain abnormalities seen on MRI. The research out of Australia studied 86 preterm infants born at less than 30 weeks gestation, and found that white matter abnormalities were significantly associated with abnormalities of general movement in infancy. (more…)

This week has been really draining and I’m not exactly sure why.  As a result, I’ve been having trouble findings thing to write about, not to mention actually getting the writing done once I do.  So, today I decided I wouldn’t do any work until the kids went to bed.  Instead, I decided to play and work on a few projects with the girls that I’ve been planning on for ages, but haven’t quite gotten around to.

One of the things I’ve been putting off is baking bread.  Today, it snowed, so I knew there was no way I was getting my preemie out the door to play outside.  She’s terrified of snow (and sand, and gravel, and well, just about anything on the ground other than grass and pavement), so I decided that since we were housebound it was as good a time as any to tackle the bread making project. (more…)

This week, I posted articles on the impact of immediate cord clamping (ICC) on preemies and the prevalence of autistic traits in extremely premature babies. Now, I read some information online that seems to tie the two article together. Apparently, there are people out there linking the practice of immediate cord clamping with the growing prevalence of autism.

The argument behind this theory goes something like this: Immediate cord clamping interferes with the normal physiologic processes which occur during the transition from fetal to newborn circulation. It causes less blood to enter the baby’s body at birth, which can lead to anemia. In addition, it blocks the flow of oxygenated blood to the baby from the placenta, which can be dangerous if the baby has not yet initiated its first breath. The worst case result in this scenario is hypoxic brain injury, which creates a particular pattern of brain damage resulting in autism.

Interestingly, my reading today suggests that boys are more sensitive to developing ischemic brain damage from ICC, and in addition, the study of autistic traits in preemies found that males had these traits more frequently. This is relevant, because immediate cord camping has pretty much become the standard of care for preemies so that they can be quickly assessed and resuscitated if necessary. According to this theory, the higher rate of ICC in preemies would be directly related to the high rate of autistic traits found in extremely premature babies.

Now, I really haven’t done enough research to know if this autism/ICC link is true or not, but it’s certainly more compelling to me than the comment posted on my women’s health blog which attributes all of our current ills to cell phones and cell phone towers. What do you think?

A recent study published in the April 2008 issue of Pediatrics looked at preemies who weighed 1500g or less at birth, and found that at an average age of 22 months (adjusted), more than a quarter of them had autistic traits. Researchers followed 91 preemies who had an MRI around their due date, and then were examined as toddlers using the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale, and the Child Behavior Checklist.

Results showed that 26% of the ex-preemies had a positive score on the autism screening tool. (more…)