Long-term prospects vary for premature babies

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When it comes to keeping premature newborns alive, we’ve come a long way, baby.

Micro-preemie Jackson Schnieder weighed 1 pound, 1 ounce when born on April 18, 2005.

A remarkably tiny, supremely premature baby’s release from a Florida hospital last week tugs at the heart and raises the question: Can we go much further?

Medical advances in the past 30 years undoubtedly have helped raise survival rates for premature infants.

Doctors once considered those born at 28 weeks’ gestation the most-premature preemies likely to survive. The threshold is now closer to 24 weeks, depending on weight.

There’s even a new term that has surfaced for the less-than-28-weekers: micro-preemies.  Read rest of the story on Omaha.com.