[Follow-up of a cohort of premature infants: identification of factors associated with hospital death].

A cohort of premature babies (i.e. under 2.000 g and/or less than 32 weeks of gestation) born in Brussels in 1987, was followed-up during and after their stay at the neonatal unit. Among the 181 babies, 27 hospital deaths were recorded (a rate of 14.9%). Some of the variables significantly associated with hospital deaths (p less than 0.005) are well known, i.e.: birthweight, gestational age, respiratory distress, intraventricular hemorrhage. The strength of the link is measured by the relative risk (RR). For each factor with a significant RR, the positive predictive value (PPV) was also calculated. Not surprisingly, respiratory distress and intraventricular hemorrhage have the highest RR and PPV. More interesting, however, is the relatively high RR of Apgar score at five minutes (the value of which is determined at an early stage). Furthermore, the positive predictive value reaches a level of 35% and may therefore be used for the early detection of babies with a high risk of hospital death.