Fantoms

ADOLESCENCE AS A NEONATAL “SPECIAL INTEREST”

Perhaps an oxymoron, or perhaps a reminder of our hope that most of our high risk survivors will grow up into normal children, normal adolescents, and normal adults. Not every journal would have published a paper on outcomes in adolescence in a neonatal section, but the notion sits easily with the idea that as neonatologists we should retain insight into, and carry responsibility for the later consequences of our actions. Indeed there is now an expanding literature on teenage outcomes of infants born prematurely or with very low birthweight. So what does this ELGA (extremely low gestational age: less than 29 weeks) paper add to our knowledge? First, that on a population basis, ELGA survivors from the mid 1980s are mostly doing well in their teenage years—but not quite as well as their peers, and perhaps sub-optimally in domains that could impact on their future performance in the workplace. Second, that the Standardised Assessment Tasks (SATs) can be a useful outcome measure with implications for others conducting follow up studies. The main problem with these fascinating data is the extent to which the survivors …