NICU Recovery Rates Different For Race?

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Specializes in Progressive Care.

I posted this on the Peds board before I found this board. OOPS!

I am a last semester ADN student doing my clinicals in Maternal Child Health. Today, I was able to observe in a NICU. The RN that I was observing said that it had been her overwhelming experience that an African-American female premmie would grow better and get stronger and have a better recovery from the NICU out of all races and genders. She then said that the AA males and Caucasian females were kind of middle tier in their recoveries, and that Caucasian males recovery rates were much lower. She said that there was a marked difference. I though that was really interesting, and I thought that there must be some literature to back that up if true, but I can't find anything. So then I wondered if this was a universal trend, or just local, or just that one nurse's perception.

What is your experience? Is there a difference for races and/or genders in NICU recovery rates? I'm just really curious about this now.

Thanks.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

She is pretty right. We call our little white preemie boys the Wimpy White Boys...for whatever reason, they are the ones that are sicker and take the longest to go home when compared, a lot of the time, not all, to AA boys. Girls are kind of equal lol

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Specializes in NICU.

yes, our girls tend to do much better :)

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Specializes in NICU.

Found an article about this:

http://www.marchofdimes.com/aboutus/15796_18614.asp

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Specializes in NICU.

This is totally right and there are stats out there to back it up. girls are stronger than boys and white boys are quite whimpy sometimes!

We had a 23 4/7 wkr AA girl who was extubated by the time she was 26wks, and went home at 35 4/7wks! She was really amazing, born just about 550gm we all thought she was not going to make it but she blew us all out of the water! She did have grade I IVH but hey, that's not much considering! We all think she was older but IUI assures us she wasn't!

Yay for antenatal steroids! Also, I think it helped that her mom was at the bedside EVERYDAY and did skin-to-skin for up to 3-4hrs sometimes!

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