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Show HEALTH vr TT ON PARADE More Children hy Premature babies like this one, bon at less than 2 pounds, now have a chance to live a healthy life. better-than-eve- r Survive tum To me, are bom too soon or too small. Dr. William Fox, director of the infant intensive-care unit at Childrens Hospital, says, Were getting 60 percent survival in babies who weigh less than 2 pounds. Ten years ago, only one percent of these infants lived. More preemies now survive because of ingenious advances in three cmcial areas: diagnosis, artificial feeding and, perhaps most important, mechanical breathing. Such newborns often suffocated to death because their lungs, the last organs to develop, did not work well enough to absorb oxygen. the birth of a child, is a wonder; keeping it dive, more wonderful still : preemie, a premature infant. Today, at 7, Matthew is growing normally and earning good marks in the second grade. At his birthday, there are still tears, says his mother. I get very emotional when he blows out die candles. Matthew means gift of God that's how he got his name. Matthew typifies the incredible progress of the last 30. years in keeping all children alive and healthy. Since 1950, the death rate for children between the ages of one and 14 has dropped by half, and it's still going down. For infants younger than one year, the mortality rate has fallen even faster. Much credit belongs to the vaccines 6 ounces. Matthew was a you enter the lit, scrubbed, white you think youre Star Trek space When Blinking lights, plastic tubing, attendants in white. unit Youre in the infant intensive-car- e at Philadelphias Childrens Hospital. Then you look closely. You see a pinkish-yellolittle creature, hardly bigger than a kitten, lying on a tiny bed. The tubes, the lights, the attendants surround it; its scrawny chest heaves with effort. Such a creature was Matthew Lucca-rell- a of Pennsville, N.J. His mother, Darlene, gave birth to him two months too soon, and he weighed only 3 pounds w B WWADC KACAZME NOVEMBER 27, 1M3 Y Mechanical breathing. Doctors can now save most infants bom with underdeveloped lungs. They place a tube into the babys airway and connect it to a machine called a ventilator that pushes oxygen into the lungs. In addition, new devices measure how much oxygen seeps into the blood. So the doctors can adjust the venti-- EARLl'BELL lator to deliver the most oxygen at the least pressure. Matthew Luccarella like President Kennedys son Patrick, who weighed 4 pounds at birth in 1963 was bom with a film of fluid covering his lungs. Its called hyaline membrane disease. Normally, an infants body makes a chemical that removes the film. The two boys lacked the chemical. In a week or so, with the help of the and antibiotics that have conquered inventilator, Matthews body made the chemical to clear his lungs, and he befectious diseases such as polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, measles, whooping gan to breathe on his own. Patrick Kennedy, without the ventilator, died cough, chicken pox and mumps. These diseases once swept through communitwo days after birth. ties in epidemic proportions and, like Feeding. Preemies used to starve to death because their digestive systems the Pied Piper, whisked children away. also had not reached maturity. They High technology and brilliant medical would throw up any food given to them. skills have crushed the deadly powers Now nurses feed preemies by vein with a of birth defects and children's cancer. New techniques and discoveries are pilspecial liquid mixture of protein, sugars, fats and vitamins. This gives the intesing up faster and faster, saving more tines and stomach time to grow up bechildren, keeping them healthier and fore the baby is given ordinary food. warding off the killers of the past and Scientists designed food pumps and present. Saving the preemies. As they did in feeding tubes (called catheters) so that Matthew Luccarellas case, doctors are the liquid food pours day and night into a large vein that feeds directly into the saving tens of thousands of infants who EARL UBELL |
