Association of admission temperature and death or adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in extremely low-gestational age neonates

Objectivepreterm infants are at higher risk of developing hypothermia and complications from cold stress, resulting in high mortality and short-term morbidity. our objective is to evaluate the association between admission temperatures of extremely low-gestational age neonates (elgan) (<29 weeks’) and adverse short-term neurodevelopmental outcomes.study designin this retrospective study, we included elgan admitted to nicus across canada between april 2009 and september 2011, who underwent neurodevelopmental assessment at 18–21 months’ corrected age.resultsof 2739 infants with a complete data set identified during the study period, 968 (35.3%) had admission temperatures ≤36.4 °c (hypothermia group), 1489 (54.5%) had temperature of 36.5–37.2 °c (normothermia group), and 282 (10.3%) had hyperthermia (≥37.3 °c). their mean birth weight was 823 ± 230 g, 944 ± 227 g and 927 ± 223 g, respectively (p < 0.01). more than 50% of infants born at 23–24 weeks were in the hypothermic group compared to 28.5–36.1% at higher gestational ages. we found 39.5% of infants in the hypothermic group had primary composite outcome of death or severe neurodevelopmental impairment (sndi). multivariate logistic regression revealed an increased adjusted odd of primary composite outcome (or = 1.32; 95% ci = [1.05, 1.66]) in the hypothermic group, compared to infants with normothermia on admission.conclusionsin our cohort of elgan, hypothermia on admission was associated with increased risk of death or sndi.