Implementation and Evaluation of Electronic Recording of Neonatal Mortality and Morbidity in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Neonatology is a specialty that has undergone dramatic advances in the last 50 years and continues to strive for ways to improve outcomes for sick newborn infants. survival of infants with birthweight <1000 grams has increased from <10% to >70%. In 1952 Dr. Virginia Apgar described the Apgar score scoring system as a means of evaluating a newborn's condition. It was not until 1965 that the first American newborn intensive care unit (NICU) was opened in New Haven, Connecticut . In the 1950s, rapid improvement in neonatal services with the advent of mechanical ventilation of the newborn. This allowed for survival of smaller and smaller newborns. In the 1980s, the development of pulmonary surfactant replacement therapy further improved survival of extremely premature infants and decreased chronic lung disease