Original articleDifferences in Mortality between Late-Preterm and Term Singleton Infants in the United States, 1995–2002
Section snippets
Methods
We used the US period-linked birth/infant death data for 1995 to 2002 to compare trends and differences in overall mortality rates by age at time of death between singleton late-preterm infants and term infants born to residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. We used aggregated 2000 to 2002 data to compare the differences in cause-specific mortality rates by age at time of death and the ranking of the leading causes of death in these groups. The period-linked data file, compiled
Infant Mortality
Between 1995 and 2002, 187,830 singleton infants died before their first birthday; 18,484 (9.8%) were late-preterm infants, and 67,197 (35.8%) were term infants. Overall infant mortality rates for both late-preterm (by 16.8%, P < .01) and term infants (by 20.0%, P < .01) declined significantly from 1995 to 2002 (Table I). Throughout the study period, overall infant mortality rates were approximately 3 times higher in late-preterm infants than term infants.
From 2000 to 2002, there were 68,697
Discussion
In this national study, we observed significant declines in infant mortality rates for both late-preterm infants and term infants in all the age-at-death categories except the late-neonatal period. Even so, in 2002 late-preterm infants were 3 times more likely than term infants to die before their first birthday and 6 times more likely to die in their first week of life; this disparity has remained relatively unchanged since 1995. Clearly, these 2 groups of infants have distinctly different
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The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the affiliated agencies.