Special care nurseries: admitting to a policy.

Few criteria exist for identifying which babies merit special nursing care, and many asymptomatic babies are offered such care unnecessarily. Birth weight is usually used to identify babies in need of special care at birth, but gestational age is a better discriminator. Babies of more than 35 weeks' gestation do not normally require admission to a special care nursery. Those preterm babies who are admitted can usually be discharged at 37 weeks' gestation even if they still weigh less than 2000 g.