NO DRUG THERAPY IN PRIMARY CARE (REFERRAL & ADVICE)
Preterm birth (<37 weeks gestation) is a neonatal emergency requiring immediate thermal care (skin-to-skin contact or warm wrap) and urgent transfer to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Primary care management focuses on maintaining normothermia, evaluating respiratory distress (grunting, nasal flaring, intercostal retractions), checking blood glucose, and ensuring immediate transport without oral feeding in distressed infants. Never delay emergency transfer for outpatient management. - Refer, with advice
Children follow the same pathway: recognise and refer. No primary-care medicine is implied.
No dose - referral pathway, no medicine given in primary care
Preterm birth (<37 weeks gestation) is a neonatal emergency requiring immediate thermal care (skin-to-skin contact or warm wrap) and urgent transfer to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Primary care management focuses on maintaining normothermia, evaluating respiratory distress (grunting, nasal flaring, intercostal retractions), checking blood glucose, and ensuring immediate transport without oral feeding in distressed infants. Never delay emergency transfer for outpatient management.
- RED FLAG - Severe hypothermia and hypoglycemia: assess urgently and refer.
- Respiratory distress, poor feeding, lethargy, or temperature instability in a preterm infant needs emergency neonatal transfer.
- Hypoglycaemia is common and dangerous in preterm infants - check glucose early if any assessment is being done at all.
- No medicine is prescribed for this in primary care - this entry is for recognition and referral. Anything given is decided by the service it is referred to.