TY - JOUR T1 - Can we estimate the length of stay of very preterm multiples? JF - Archives of Disease in Childhood - Fetal and Neonatal Edition JO - Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed DO - 10.1136/archdischild-2018-316321 SP - fetalneonatal-2018-316321 AU - Sarah E Seaton AU - Elizabeth S Draper AU - Keith R Abrams AU - Neena Modi AU - Bradley N Manktelow A2 - , Y1 - 2019/02/02 UR - http://fn.bmj.com/content/early/2019/02/02/archdischild-2018-316321.abstract N2 - In our recent paper1 we provided estimates of length of stay for very preterm (24–31 weeks gestational age) singleton babies admitted for neonatal care in units within England. As with much neonatal research, we chose to exclude multiples (twins, triplets and higher order; in this letter referred to as ‘multiples’) from this initial work. However, as around 1 in 10 twins are born before 32 weeks, compared with around 1 in 100 singleton births,2 it is important to be able to also estimate the length of stay for these babies to aid the planning of healthcare resources and facilitate the counselling of their parents.We were interested in whether the estimates of length of stay from the singleton population could be applied to multiples without the need to calculate new estimates. Data related to multiples admitted to neonatal units in England equivalent to the singletons was extracted from the National Neonatal Research Database. A total of 7496 babies met the inclusion criteria as described elsewhere1: 6755 twins and 741 triplets or higher order.We calculated the observed median (25th, 75th centiles) length of stay for multiples by week of gestational age at birth and compared it with that estimated previously for singletons (table 1). Across all gestational ages, the median length of stay for multiples was very similar to their singleton … ER -