HOW AGGRESSIVE SHOULD TREATMENT BE GIVEN A SICK NEWBORN?
[table of contents] Many times when a child is a few years old and severely disabled, parents begin to wonder whether treatment should have been less aggressive than it was. Given the tremendous uncertainties in outcome, physicians and parents usually choose to treat newborns and preserve life with the hope that the outcome will be a good one. There are clearly exceptions, such as when the baby has a known chromosomal defect (such as trisomy 18), where the poor prognosis is known and where very aggressive treatment may not be used. However, in the majority of cases the information regarding ultimate outcome is not available, and families and physicians do the best they can with he limited information they have. Often the prognosis is based on information from studies of a large number of babies with a similar birth weight. The chance of an individual baby having cerebral palsy or mental retardation(expressed as a percentage) is derived from these studies. Nevertheless, it is impossible
