TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Origins of the Premature Infant Nursery and Follow-Up Care A1 - Malcolm, William F. PY - 2015 T2 - Beyond the NICU: Comprehensive Care of the High-Risk Infant AB - Long before the first neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) opened in the 1960s, physicians treated premature infants and debated their future. To be sure, the smallest such infants likely died within hours at home, victims of what we would recognize as respiratory distress syndrome. The fate of those born 1 to 2 months early, however, hung in the balance. In 19th-century American cities, where some 15% to 20% of all infants died before reaching their first birthday, premature babies were the most vulnerable of all. Many succumbed to a vicious cycle of hypothermia, poor feeding, and infection in the first weeks of life. Physicians rarely did anything to save them, and resigned themselves to seeing this high mortality as a law of nature, not amenable to medical effort. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/04/16 UR - accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1105544979 ER -