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. 2021 Jul 12:9:647880.
doi: 10.3389/fped.2021.647880. eCollection 2021.

Extremely Preterm Infant Admissions Within the SafeBoosC-III Consortium During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Marie Isabel Rasmussen  1 , Mathias Lühr Hansen  1 , Gerhard Pichler  2 , Eugene Dempsey  3 , Adelina Pellicer  4 , Afif El-Khuffash  5 , Shashidhar A  6 , Salvador Piris-Borregas  7 , Miguel Alsina  8 , Merih Cetinkaya  9 , Lina Chalak  10 , Hilal Özkan  11 , Mariana Baserga  12 , Jan Sirc  13 , Hans Fuchs  14 , Ebru Ergenekon  15 , Luis Arruza  16 , Amit Mathur  17 , Martin Stocker  18 , Olalla Otero Vaccarello  19 , Tomasz Szczapa  20 , Kosmas Sarafidis  21 , Barbara Królak-Olejnik  22 , Asli Memisoglu  23 , Hallvard Reigstad  24 , Elżbieta Rafińska-Ważny  25 , Eleftheria Hatzidaki  26 , Zhang Peng  27 , Despoina Gkentzi  28 , Renaud Viellevoye  29 , Julie De Buyst  30 , Emmanuele Mastretta  31 , Ping Wang  32 , Gitte Holst Hahn  1 , Lars Bender  33 , Luc Cornette  34 , Jakub Tkaczyk  35 , Ruth Del Rio  36 , Monica Fumagalli  37   38 , Evangelia Papathoma  39 , Maria Wilinska  40 , Gunnar Naulaers  41 , Iwona Sadowska-Krawczenko  42 , Chantal Lecart  43 , María Luz Couce  44 , Siv Fredly  45 , Anne Marie Heuchan  46 , Tanja Karen  47 , Gorm Greisen  1
Affiliations

Extremely Preterm Infant Admissions Within the SafeBoosC-III Consortium During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Marie Isabel Rasmussen et al. Front Pediatr. .

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate if the number of admitted extremely preterm (EP) infants (born before 28 weeks of gestational age) differed in the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) of the SafeBoosC-III consortium during the global lockdown when compared to the corresponding time period in 2019. Design: This is a retrospective, observational study. Forty-six out of 79 NICUs (58%) from 17 countries participated. Principal investigators were asked to report the following information: (1) Total number of EP infant admissions to their NICU in the 3 months where the lockdown restrictions were most rigorous during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) Similar EP infant admissions in the corresponding 3 months of 2019, (3) the level of local restrictions during the lockdown period, and (4) the local impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the everyday life of a pregnant woman. Results: The number of EP infant admissions during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was 428 compared to 457 in the corresponding 3 months in 2019 (-6.6%, 95% CI -18.2 to +7.1%, p = 0.33). There were no statistically significant differences within individual geographic regions and no significant association between the level of lockdown restrictions and difference in the number of EP infant admissions. A post-hoc analysis based on data from the 46 NICUs found a decrease of 10.3%in the total number of NICU admissions (n = 7,499 in 2020 vs. n = 8,362 in 2019). Conclusion: This ad hoc study did not confirm previous reports of a major reduction in the number of extremely pretermbirths during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrial.gov, identifier: NCT04527601 (registered August 26, 2020), https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04527601.

Keywords: COVID-19; extremely preterm; neonatal intensive care unit admission; observational study; pandemic; randomized clinical trial.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of randomisations per month within each NICU actively randomizing infants in the SafeBoosC-III trial during the last 9 months.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Change in percent in extremely preterm admissions between the 3 months with the most rigorous lockdown restrictions in 2020, compared to the corresponding months of 2019 in the 46 participating NICUs in the SafeBoosC-III consortium.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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