TY - JOUR T1 - Annual volume of very low-birth-weight infant deliveries appears to be more important than level of neonatal intensive care unit for optimising perinatal care JF - Evidence Based Medicine JO - Evid Based Med SP - 32 LP - 32 DO - 10.1136/ebmed-2015-110293 VL - 21 IS - 1 AU - Sorina Grisaru-Granovsky AU - Lital Keinan-Boker Y1 - 2016/02/01 UR - http://ebm.bmj.com/content/21/1/32.abstract N2 - Commentary on: Jensen EA, Lorch SA. Effects of a birth hospital's neonatal intensive care unit level and annual volume of very low-birth-weight infant deliveries on morbidity and mortality. JAMA Pediatr 2015;169:e151906.The goal of perinatal care regionalisation is to improve the likelihood that new borns requiring sophisticated support are born in appropriately equipped centres. The present study evaluates associations between birth hospital characteristics, and neonatal morbidity and morbidity–mortality composites, and assesses the strength of these associations by concurrent analyses of birth hospitals’ annual very low-birth-weight (VLBW) infant deliveries, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) level and neonatal outcomes.The study included birth weights (BW) of 500–1499 g. It excluded BWs of >5SDs from mean for gestational age, infants <500 g and those with severe congenital anomalies.The three US states chosen have non-homogeneous demographics—a potentially destabilising variable not considered in the models. Primary outcomes were composites of death or bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), … ER -