[The extremely immature newborn--a dilemma of the obstetrician and paediatrician].

The uncertain prognosis of premature newborn with an extremely low birth weight has so far resulted in uncertainty regarding the therapeutic measures to be taken, both with obstetricians and with paediatricians. However, the follow-up studies made up to now show that such infants do not have bad prospects. Prematurely born infants with a birth weight of 1000-1500 g are without any later handicaps with a quota of 85-90% provided they are given well-organized intensive-care treatment. Children between 750-1000 g birth weight are without psychomotor anomalies with an average incidence of 75-80%. However, the few available studies conducted on even more severely immature infants point towards a rapidly rising probability of physical disability if the birth weight is below 750 g or the duration of pregnancy less than 26 weeks. It seems that this denotes the present limit value of perinatal intensive-care medicine.