• Neurodevelopment
• Neonatology

Neonatal intensive care has been one of the successful areas in modern medicine; and with progressively advancing technology and the development of interventions, there has been an ongoing improvement in survival of preterm infants, including those born at the limit of viability at 23 and 24 weeks’ gestation. As these infants have high risk of adverse neonatal outcomes and long-term neurodevelopmental impairments, it remains important also to monitor the changing trends in survivors free of major neonatal morbidity and long-term neurodisability.

There have been several reports in the perinatal literature, looking at the changing trends in important neonatal morbidities: bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), grades 3 and 4 intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH), cystic periventricular leucomalacia (PVL), severe retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). The data quality of such reports vary however, depending on whether the report was a hospital unit based or a large population based, data collection was retrospective or prospective and also depending on the ascertainment of the outcomes.

The article by Pfister et al1 provides useful information on trends in some important major neonatal morbidities, but not severe ROP. There are several strengths of this study: being a …