| Intensive care of
very tiny babies was very different before the 1970s compared with what
it is today. At that time there were no ventilators to help babies with
breathing problems. Other care was very basic, but included incubators to
keep babies warm, and adding oxygen to the air that they breathed. The ability
to feed babies was also limited to tube feeding, or short-term glucose and
water through intravenous drips. Not surprisingly, survival rates for the
tiniest babies, those less than 1000 g at birth, were very low, averaging
less than 10% through the 1960s. Not only were their survival chances very
low, but also the few who did survive were far more likely to have substantial
long-term health problems, particularly affecting their ability to think,
walk, talk, see and hear. As intensive care developed, particularly
with the advent of ventilators in the 1970s, the survival rates started
to rise. There were a few astute paediatricians caring for babies around
this time who recognised that not only was it important to improve the
babies’ chances of survival, but it was perhaps more important to
know how intensive care was affecting their long-term health. Dr Bill
Kitchen at the Royal Women’s Hospital was one of the paediatricians
who wanted to follow children who had survived through childhood, to establish
the health problems that arose as a consequence of neonatal intensive
care. As Dr Kitchen began his follow-up studies, he started with children
who were born in the Royal Women’s Hospital. However, he soon realised
that what was happening at one hospital might not be happening at all
hospitals, and he established links with the other hospitals in the state
of Victoria that cared for tiny babies, in particular the Queen Victoria
Hospital (now Monash Medical Centre), the Mercy Hospital for Women, and
the Royal Children’s Hospital. It was from these early collaborations
in the late 1970s that the Victorian Infant Collaborative Study (VICS)
Group arose.
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