Predicting the future for newborns requiring intensive care.

When intensive care for newborns was introduced thirty years ago its primary goal was to improve the rates of survival of sick and premature infants. Medicine has been successful in attaining this goal; however, as more infants survive, the cost of intensive care and the additional cost of services and care for handicapped survivors continue to escalate. In order to curb the increasing cost of newborn intensive care, heightened initiatives directed at the prevention of premature births will be necessary.