First-year burden of disease for babies admitted to special care nurseries: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aim: This systematic review aimed to report on health outcomes of newborn babies admitted to special care nurseries up to age 1 year, and where possible, compare their outcomes with those of healthy term babies.

Methods: Systematic searches through Ovid MEDLINE, PubMed and Embase databases. We included studies reporting outcomes up to age 1 year for special care nursery babies and moderate-late preterm babies, restricting to studies published after 2000. We dual-screened studies and extracted study characteristics, prevalences and risk of health outcomes. We conducted meta-analysis to combine prevalence and risk estimates of each outcome.

Results: Among 22 585 eligible studies, 21 relevant studies were identified. Jaundice, hypothermia, hypoglycaemia and respiratory disease were prevalent in special care nursery babies, with pooled prevalence from 19% to 32%. Compared with healthy term babies, the special care nursery group had higher risk of all reported outcomes with pooled risk ratios from 1.93 to 14.85. There were limited studies reporting outcomes after discharge.

Conclusion: Babies admitted to special care nurseries face a higher burden of disease compared with non-admitted term babies, but there is currently limited literature describing their post-discharge outcomes.