Neonatal medicine

Critical care decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine: ethical issues

Families and healthcare professionals face difficult and highly emotional decisions about the treatment and care of extremely premature babies.

This report discusses the ethical, legal and social issues raised and proposes guidelines on giving intensive care to babies born before 26 weeks.

The issues discussed in this report were featured in a BBC2 documentary on 9 March 2011 called 23 Week Babies: The Price of Life - find out more

November 2006