Neonatal outcomes in a population of late-preterm infants.

The late-preterm infants are a group of premature steadily increasing, different from term infants as immature in terms of respiratory, metabolic, neurological, and immunological features. They may present at birth and during the first week of life various diseases and brain lesions echographically evident. We analyzed the neonatal outcomes of 417 late-preterm infants, born in our Department of Neonatology in a period of two and a half years, evaluating respiratory problems (RDS, transient tachypnea, pneumonia, pneumothorax, and apnea), metabolic problems (hypoglycemia, hypomagnesemia, hypo-hypernatremia, dehydration, hypocalcemia, and hyperbilirubinemia), infections, neurological symptoms associated with electrolyte disturbances, the disease patterns observed by ultrasound examination of the brain, the kidney ultrasound images, genital malformations.