EPICure 2
Why is another EPICure Study Needed?
The way doctors and nurses look after very tiny babies has changed a lot since the original study started in 1995. We can see that more babies seem to be surviving now compared to then. We think it is important to document this properly and to see if the children born now have similar problems to those born over 10 years ago.
As part of the new EPICure studies we will study all babies born in England at 26 weeks of gestation or less (14 or more weeks premature) during 2006.
The new study will tell us how effective advances in Neonatal care have been. It will also tell us more about the lung development of very tiny babies. The professional approach of different baby units will also be considered. This will build on the knowledge gained through the hard work of the EPICure families and study group in the original study.
The original EPICure studies told us that babies who are well in the hours shortly after birth often do better in the long term. The new EPICure studies will collect more information about how sick these tiny babies are in the first few hours than was collected in 1995.
How EPICure 2 will work
EPICure 2 will collect information on all babies born in England during 2006 between the gestational ages of 22 weeks and 26 weeks + 6 days. All labour wards will record any birth between these gestations and this information will be sent to EPICure 2. A small section of the cord attached to the placenta will be looked at under a microscope to look for evidence of infection or inflammation occuring in the womb before the baby was born.
Information on babies and mothers after birth is already collected, by an organization called CEMACH, as part of our national statistics. We have worked with the people responsible for this to adapt their collection system during 2006 so that we can repeat EPICure. Two forms will be filled in by the people who looking after these babies on Neonatal Units. One will tell what happens during the first 28 days of life and the second covers day 29 until discharge from hospital.
EPICure 2 will include more details about mothers and their pregnancies than the original EPICure did. To do this we have additional help from obstetricians, lung specialists, pathologists as well as statisticians, epidemiologists and neonatologists.