Study Finds Early Intervention Effective for Premature Infants' Development

Premature infants are born into a world their tiny bodies often are not ready for. Developmental differences between those babies and full-term infants often are apparent prior to a preemie’s discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have documented.

Their study points to opportunities for therapeutic interventions — even in the first few weeks of life — to improve premature babies’ long-term outcomes.
The research, which focused on infants born at least 10 weeks early, is available online and will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.

Defying Odds, Twins Prepare for Graduation

ELK RIVER, Minn. -- It does not take much to weigh out two pounds of grapes at the grocery store. Try it. Just a couple clumps of grapes should do it.
That is how much Karla and Kayla Koppendrayer weighed when they were born.
Actually, the twins, delivered in an emergency caesarean birth at 25 weeks, six days, weighed 2 pounds, 2 ounces each. Karla was a whopping 14.5 inches long while Kayla, born a minute later, was 14 inches in length.
In 1992, babies born this early in a pregnancy normally died, and if they did manage to make it, they would suffer severe developmental disabilities.
But these super (micro) preemies, as they are called, overcame many obstacles and will graduate May 27 from Spectrum High School in Elk River, Karla with a 3.93 grade point average (GPA) and Kayla with a 3.92 GPA.