Pathogenesis and Prognosis of Prematurity

DURING the past century a variety of factors have come together to reduce infant mortality and therefore to increase mean life expectancy in industrialized societies. As environmental factors such as infection and disturbances of nutrition have become less prominent causes of death and disability in the newborn infant, the relative role of factors less affected by environmental control has increased. Prematurity is the most frequently recurring factor now involved in infant death and morbidity. As such it has become the largest single problem in contemporary pediatrics and obstetrics, as well as one of the major public-health problems of the present . . .