Objective: Accurate outcome prediction is crucial for counseling parents and providing individualized treatment to extremely premature infants. We sought to improve upon existing prediction model by using a diverse population-based cohort of extremely premature live births (⩽28 weeks' gestation) for survival and survival without severe neonatal morbidity at different times throughout the first week of life and to evaluate potential differences by race/ethnicity and maternal education.
Study design: Retrospective cohort study of all California live births from 2007 through 2011 with linked birth, death and hospital discharge records.
Results: A total of 6009 infants were included. In the validation data set at time of delivery, the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve for the model containing all predictors was 0.863 for survival and 0.789 for survival without severe morbidity. The marginal probability of survival without severe neonatal morbidity of an Asian infant born to a mother with <12 years of education compared with the reference (Caucasian infant, mother with ⩾12 years of education) was -0.23 (95% confidence interval (CI) -0.31 to -0.15) for all infants at time of birth and -0.28 (95% CI -0.39 to -0.18) for infants with attempted resuscitation. Notably, no other differences by racial/ethnic category and maternal education emerged.
Conclusions: Probabilities of survival and survival without major morbidity change rapidly throughout the first week of life. Extremely premature infants born to Asian mothers with less than a high school education appear to have a lower probability to survive without significant morbidity compared with their Caucasian peers.