Effect of Age at Transfer on Survival Among Preterm Newborns

• Activity Number: 587
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
• Author(s): Kenneth Pietz*+ and Jochen Profit and Gould Jeffrey
• Companies: Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital and Stanford University Medical Center
• Keywords: neonatal ; survival ; logistic regression

Abstract

Delayed postnatal transfer of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants from a community hospital to a regional neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) may increase in-hospital mortality risk. We examined risk adjusted survival among 1346 infants (< 1500g birth weight) transferred to one of 24 NICUs between 2004 and 2007, to determine the effect of age at transfer on survival. We used Kaplan-Meier plots to compare survival by transfer age and logistic regression to evaluate the effect of transfer age on mortality. Survival was lower in transferred infants vs. inborn VLBW infants (91% vs. 95%, p < 0.0001). Among transferred infants, the log-rank test showed significant differences in survival between transfer ages (p=.0015). Compared to transfer on the day of birth, risk adjusted mortality was significantly higher for babies transferred on day 2 (OR 2.23, 95% CI [1.32, 3.76]).