Although the United States spends more on neonatal intensive care than Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, newborns in each country have similar rates of survival, Dartmouth Medical School researchers have found.
The findings were published in the June issue of Pediatrics.
Using information from 1993-2000, the researchers found that the United States spent more on neonatal intensive care but placed less emphasis on reproductive and prenatal care than the other three countries.
The researchers looked at newborn death rates per 1000 live births, by birth-weight categories from 500 g to 2500 g. There was no consistent pattern of better outcome in any category.
They questioned the effectiveness of the current distribution of reproductive resources in the United States and the marginal benefits of additional neonatal intensive care (for example, controlling for population differences, the United States has 40% more neonatologists for high-risk infants than Australia, the next . . . [Full Text of this Article]
