Might rare factors account for most of the mortality of preterm babies?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Preterm delivery has a variety of causes, with each of these presumably carrying its own mortality risk. To the extent that they add to the risk of mortality, the various pathologic factors triggering preterm delivery will confound the causal contribution of gestational age to mortality, inflating the observed rates of gestational-age-specific mortality. We have previously estimated that about half of the mortality of US preterm singletons may be due to unmeasured pathologies that increase mortality risk and also cause preterm birth. In this paper, we examine the impact that rare factors may have, at least in theory, on preterm mortality.

Methods

We constructed a simple model of gestational-age-specific mortality, in which we arbitrarily selected a function to rep

SUBMITTER: Basso O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3097041 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature