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Health Reform: A critically ill premature baby is moved to a U.S hospital to get the treatment she couldn't get in the system we're told we should emulate. Cost-effective care? In Canada, as elsewhere, you get what you pay for.Ava Isabella Stinson was born last Thursday at St. Joseph's hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Weighing only two pounds, she was born 13 weeks premature and needed some very special care. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joseph's — or anywhere else in the entire province of Ontario, it seems.

A critically ill Hamilton preemie turned away from McMaster Children's Hospital is all alone in a Buffalo intensive care unit because her parents don't have passports to get across the border. Hamilton's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) was full when Ava Isabella Stinson was born 14 weeks premature at St. Joseph's Hospital Thursday at 12:24 p.m.

BELLFLOWER, Calif. – Newborn octuplets in Southern California are a feisty bunch that appear healthy even at nine weeks premature, a doctor said Tuesday. Three babies are being given oxygen but appeared to be doing well, said Dr. Mandhir Gupta, a neonatologist at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center. Two of the newborns were initially on ventilators but no longer need them. At least four could be ready for their first oral feeding later Tuesday.

By Associated Press Writer Raquel Maria Dillon, Mom delivers rare octuplets AP A woman gave birth Monday to eight babies, only the second time in history octuplets have survived more than a few hours, doctors said. The mother gave birth to six boys and two girls weighing between 1 pound, 8 ounces, and 3 pounds, 4 ounces, doctors at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center said. The hospital had scheduled a Caesarean section for seven babies, but doctors were surprised when an eighth came out at 10:48 a.m. "My eyes were wide," Dr. Karen Maples said, explaining her reaction to the...

A mother has given birth to eight babies in a hospital south of Los Angeles, the world's second live-born set of octuplets. Dr. Karen Maples told KCAL-TV that the babies were born Monday at Kaiser Permanante and were "doing quite well." The hospital says the mother, who asked not to be identified, gave birth to six girls and two boys weighing between 1.8 pounds and 3.4 pounds. Dr. Harold Henry told KCAL that "they were all screaming and kicking around very vigorously."

Lexie Slater (Photo: Cavendish Press) London, Jan 7, 2009 / 06:25 am (CNA).- A premature baby born in Britain 23 weeks into pregnancy has been allowed to return home six months after her birth, prompting her parents to question the British laws which permit unborn children like her to be aborted.Lexie Slater-Folksman weighed only 1 lb, 8 oz. at delivery. She was put on life support, her parents being warned that she might not survive, the Daily Mail reports.Her eyes not having developed fully, Lexie required laser surgery when she was just one month-old. She also suffered collapsed lungs...

When Chelsea Banton was born five weeks prematurely, doctors predicted she had 36 hours to live. Proving them wrong was the first miracle for Chelsea, now an Independence High School freshman. “She spent the first four months in a neonatal intensive care unit,” recalls her mother, Colleen Banton of Mint Hill. Before Chelsea was 2, she was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, the first of several dangerous run-ins with the illness that have made her a familiar face in Presbyterian's pediatric intensive care unit.

Infant seriously ill before blood thinner error One newborn is dead after a Christus Spohn Hospital South pharmacy error that led to as many as 17 babies getting as much as 100 times the recommended dosage of the blood thinner heparin. It's still unclear what role, if any, the heparin played in the infant's death, because the child already was seriously ill and being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit before dying Tuesday morning, said Dr. Richard Davis, chief medical officer for Christus Spohn Health System. Heparin routinely is used in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit to...

The researchers published their findings in the April 17 New England Journal of Medicine. In addition to gestational age, factors influencing survival and risk of disability consisted of: whether the baby is male or female (sex); birthweight; whether the baby was a single baby, or one of two or more infants born; and whether the baby's mother was given medication during pregnancy to prompt the development of the baby's lungs. Known as antenatal steroids, these drugs are typically given to women in premature labor, or who are at known risk for giving birth prematurely. ..... After conducting mathematical analyses of...

Twenty-five years ago, when Kanwaljeet Anand was a medical resident in a neonatal intensive care unit, his tiny patients, many of them preterm infants, were often wheeled out of the ward and into an operating room. He soon learned what to expect on their return. The babies came back in terrible shape: their skin was gray, their “What’s going on in there to make these babies so stressed?” Anand wondered. Breaking with hospital practice, he wrangled permission to follow his patients into the O.R. “That’s when I discovered that the babies were not getting anesthesia,” he recalled recently. Infants undergoing...

Survival of early babies 'doubles' By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor  Last Updated: 2:46am GMT 01/02/2008     The abortion debate is reignited today as figures show that survival rates of babies born very prematurely have doubled in the past 20 years. Have your say: Does this change your view on abortion debate? All evidence tells us to reduce abortion limit Q&A: Why limit abortion?    Premature babies are capable of surviving below the current 24-week time limit   A study at one of Britain's top neonatal units found that one third of babies born between 22 and 25 weeks' gestation...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Two researchers say reducing abortions in the United States would significantly cut the rate of premature births. They say the rate has increased as abortion has been legalized and point to Poland as an example of how banning or significantly reducing abortions would help pregnant women. Dr. Richard E. Behrman, representing the Institute of Medicine, has identified prior first-trimester induced abortion as an “immutable medical risk factor associated with pre-term birth.”In his book Preterm Birth: Causes, Consequences, and Prevention, Behrman found that the premature birth rate in the U.S. was 12.5% in 2004 -- 40 percent...

It was to be the one and only cuddle Carolyn Isbister would have with her tiny, premature daughter. Rachael had been born minutes before - weighing a mere 20oz - and had only minutes to live. Her heart was beating once every ten seconds and she was not breathing. As doctors gave up, Miss Isbister lifted her baby out of her hospital blanket and placed her on her chest. She said: "I didn't want her to die being cold. So I lifted her out of her blanket and put her against my skin to warm her up. Her feet were...

Baby 'the size of two mobile phones' miraculously survivesBy KAREN GRATTAGE - More by this author » Last updated at 22:47pm on 15th September 2007  When Deborah and Russell Anderson learned they were finally expecting the baby they longed for, they decided to enjoy their last long-haul holiday for years. But their two-week trip to South Africa became a traumatic six-month stay after Deborah gave birth to their son Henry at just 26 weeks. The couple had hoped the £3,000 holiday in Cape Town would be a relaxing antidote to the 12 months they had spent undergoing IVF treatment....

BLOOMINGTON – The first of several breast milk collection sites has opened as part of a state plan intended in part to benefit ill and premature infants. State health commissioner Judy Monroe attended Friday’s opening of Indiana’s first “breast milk depot” at a Women, Infants and Children office in Bloomington. She said similar depots will open next year at three other WIC offices in Indiana. Women visiting such depots can donate pumped breast milk that will be given to Indiana Mothers’ Milk Bank in Indianapolis, one of 10 such banks in the United States. The bank provides screened, pasteurized breast...

African-American women are two to three times as likely to give birth prematurely as women of European origin. The reasons have generally been assumed to be socioeconomic. But scientists have now identified a possible genetic contributor: a variant relatively common among African Americans that affects the strength and resilience of the amniotic sac. When a woman's "water breaks," the amniotic sac that keeps the fetus bathed in fluid ruptures. If this happens much before the usual gestation period of 39 weeks, she goes into premature labor. Called Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes (PPRM), the condition affects three percent of pregnancies...

WASHINGTON -- More than half a million babies are born prematurely each year, and specialists are urging that doctors take new steps to battle one cause: infertility treatments that spur twins, triplets, and other multiple births. But despite a booming business, infertility treatment explains only a fraction of the nation's huge and growing problem of prematurity. One in eight babies now is born at least three weeks early, many even earlier, a rate that has increased more than 30 percent in two decades. Trying to help these fragile infants survive and thrive costs the nation at least $26 billion a...

Premature babies experience feelings of pain rather than simply displaying reflex reactions, a study says. Experts have never been sure how a premature baby responds to pain, the Journal of Neuroscience reported. But a team from University College London found that they do feel pain after analysing brain scans taken when blood samples were being drawn. They hope the findings will lead to more formal plans for managing pain in premature babies. Lead researcher Professor Maria Fitzgerald said: "We have shown for the first time that the information about pain reaches the brain in premature babies. "Beforehand, although we could...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Many premature infants appear to play catch-up by early adulthood, reaching levels of education and employment that are similar to those of normal-weight children, a study found.     The mostly reassuring results are the latest installment from Canadian researchers studying the development of 166 premature babies born in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The babies weighed 2 pounds or less. The infants have been tracked from their birth in central-west Ontario into childhood and beyond.     The results contrast with less favorable outcomes in other long-term studies, but the Canadian children had benefits other preemies lacked, noted an...

Miracles of God and Miracles of Science by David M. Phelps, Associate Editor Doctors have delivered a 1 lb. 13 oz. baby girl from Susan Torres, a pregnant woman from Arlington, Virginia who had been on life support for three months since a cancer-induced stroke left her brain-dead. At the request of Torres’s husband, doctors kept her body alive long enough for the child to have a chance of life outside the womb, carefully monitoring both patients to make sure the cancer did not spread to the developing baby. When the child was finally delivered, the family released a statement...