The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
An emerging medical ethics issue is whether to delay posting pathology reports to electronic health records (EHR) to allow clinicians time to follow up.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(8):826-832. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.8.pfor1-1608.
Dr Esha Bansal joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Drs Saran Kunaprayoon and Linda P. Zhang: “Opportunities for Global Health Diplomacy in Transnational Robotic Telesurgery.”
Neutral, nondirective counseling of women who are about to give birth to extremely premature infants can undermine their autonomous decision making rather than promoting it.
When evaluating the developments and complications of a marginally viable premature infant, physicians and parents must work together to decide on treatment that is in the infant’s best interest.