The impact of maternal characteristics on the moderately premature infant: an antenatal maternal transport clinical prediction rule

Background—Moderately premature infants, defined here as those born between 30 0/7 and 34 6/7 weeks gestation, comprise 3.9% of all births in the United States and 32% of all preterm births. While long-term outcomes for these infants are better than for less mature infants, morbidity and mortality are still substantially increased in comparison to infants born at term. There is an added survival benefit resulting from birth at a tertiary neonatal care center, and although many of these infants require tertiary level care, delivery at lower level hospitals and subsequent neonatal transfer are still common. Objective—Our primary aim was to determine the impact of maternal characteristics and antenatal medical management on the early neonatal course of the moderately premature infant. The secondary aim was to create a clinical prediction rule to determine which infants require intubation and mechanical ventilation in the first 24 hours of life. Such a prediction rule could inform the decision to transfer maternal-fetal patients prior to delivery to a facility with a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where optimal care could be provided without the requirement for a neonatal transfer. Methods—Data for this analysis came from the cohort of infants in the Moderately Premature Infant Project (MPIP) database, a multi-center cohort study of 850 infants born at gestational age 30 0/7 to 34 6/7 weeks, who were discharged home alive. We built a logistic regression model to identify maternal characteristics associated with need for tertiary care, as measured by administration of surfactant. Using statistically significant covariates from this model, we then created a numerical decision rule to predict need for tertiary care.