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In the last 30 years, the proportion of premature babies weighing less than 1500 g in Switzerland has doubled from 0.49% to 1.0%. The mortality of these high-risk patients could be reduced thanks to a better insight into the physiology of the adaptation from intra- to extrauterine life and technological developments. The higher the survival rate of ever more immature children, the greater the risk of disability, even if longitudinal studies show that this rate decreases again over the course of childhood and, remarkably, the quality of life of former premature babies in adulthood does not coincide with the degree of disability. In order to document this situation in Switzerland and to improve the quality of care, the nine Swiss neonatology departments of the top level of care founded the Swiss Neonatal Network (SNN) in 1995. This network collects medically relevant parameters of all children born before 32 weeks of pregnancy or with a birth weight of less than 1500 g in a central register. Since 2000, standardized developmental data at the age of 2 and 5–6 years have also been prospectively collected from all preterm infants before 28 weeks of gestation. These surveys are carried out in 15 Swiss development and/or neuropediatric departments, which together form the follow-up group. The Swiss Neonatal Network & Follow-up Group conducts longitudinal and cross-sectional epidemiological studies and publishes them in specialist journals. It provides the data basis for the difficult ethical discussion about the intensive treatment of premature babies on the verge of viability and has been calculating quality indicators since 2008.