According to a study of 18,000 British children published in the British Medical Journal. It has found in a research that premature born babies suffer from a long-term problem of some sort, and 15 per cent more likely to suffer from asthma.
Child birth after 39 to 40 week pregnancy known as full term birth while birth in 37th week or less time called early birth & they have higher risk of health problem, study says.
The Child birth after the number of weeks of pregnancy was calculated from the mother’s report of her expected due date. Child Birth Can be divided into following groups.
Very preterm group (defined by the authors as 23-31 weeks) have very high risk.
moderate preterm group (32-33 weeks) have high risk.
late preterm group (34-36 weeks) risk of health problems
early term group (37-38 weeks) have moderate health problems
full term birth (39-41 weeks) considered as healthy child.
Dr Boyle said: “Historically neonatologists have regarded ‘term’ births as anything beyond the start of 37 weeks, as the health outcomes were thought to be the same.”
She said, “As neonatologists we don’t routinely follow up babies born after the start of 32 weeks, unless there are serious health problems in the month after birth.”
She added, “What we’ve done is take it a step further and look at the ‘early-term’ group, born in weeks 37 and 38. “What we’ve found is that there isn’t really this dichotomy [between pre and post 37 weeks].”
National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford, said: “Our results challenge perceptions about outcomes for babies born during part of the period of gestation that has traditionally been regarded as term (37 to 38 weeks).”
Professor Andy Shennan, consultant obstetrician for pregnancy research charity, Tommy’s said: ‘It is increasingly appreciated that babies born even a few weeks early can have long term health and behavioural issues.”
“Most pre-term related problems actually come from these later pre-term births, as although less serious, they are far more common than very early births.”
This study have carried out on more then 14000 babies.
