1 Department of Neonatology, Children's Hospital National Medical Center, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC
What's the Problem?
The survival in substantial numbers of extrauterine fetuses, barely entering their last trimester at birth, has caused these babies to complete their retinal vascularization in the unnatural environment of the modern intensive care nursery. The result is a second epidemic of retinopathy of prematurity, the greatest risk factor for which is clearly survival after extremely immature birth. A flurry of investigations has addressed factors that might contribute to this problem, and at least a dozen are supported by some epidemiologic associations.1-3 Oxygen is on this list but by no means in the preeminent way of the past.