Differences in rehabilitation for high-risk newborns: The impact of neonatal intensive care unit hospitalization
Kyoung Yee Kang, Eun Sil Kang, Hye-Kang Park, Seung Been Hong, Ha Lim Lee
Abstract
There is growing recognition of the importance of rehabilitation through immediate and long-term follow-up, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) aftercare is emerging as an important field to consider rehabilitation services. An increasing number of children born are admitted to the NICU with complications commonly related to low birth weight, premature birth, and development of underlying diseases.
Introduction
High-risk newborns are infants who experience difficulties adapting after birth, have an elevated risk of mortality and morbidity, and require immediate medical attention in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) [1]. An increasing percentage of newborns (10%–15%) require admission to the NICU [2].
Materials and Methods
A nationwide retrospective cohort analysis was performed using claims data provided by the Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database for infants born between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2021. The use of claims data was approved by the NHIS (NHIS-2023-1-244), and pseudonymized data were provided to prevent personal information identification.
Results
Among the 67,250 eligible patients, 39,711 (59.0%) and 27,539 (41.0%) were classified into the non-NICU and NICU groups, respectively. PSM resulted in a total of 16,262 patients per group (Table 1).
Discussion
This study, which analyzed the rehabilitation patterns of newborns admitted and not admitted to the NICU, revealed that (1) after the first rehabilitation session, patients in the non-NICU group received a higher number of interventions during the subsequent two years.
Acknowledgments
We sincerely thank the research and analysis division of National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital and Tae-Mi Yook for statistical analysis assistance.
Citation: Kang KY, Kang ES, Park H-K, Hong SB, Lee HL (2025) Differences in rehabilitation for high-risk newborns: The impact of neonatal intensive care unit hospitalization. PLoS One 20(5): e0322998. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322998
Editor: Mostafa Shaban, Cairo University / Jouf University, SAUDI ARABIA
Received: June 4, 2024; Accepted: April 1, 2025; Published: May 9, 2025
Copyright: © 2025 Kang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: Access to The Korean National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database is restricted by Korea's Personal Information Protection Act. We received approval from NHIS to provide data with de-identified personal information, and the data was destroyed after the approved period. The approval process involves submitting the research plan, IRB approval result notice, and database (DB) research application documents to the NHIS Big Data Platform, after which the approved DB is received through review committee deliberation. In addition, the data provided is only available on the designated NHIS Analysis Center computer and cannot be exported outside. Access to the dataset is only available to approved researchers, and requests for dataset access must be made directly to NHIS (https://nhiss.nhis.or.kr/bd/ab/bdaba000eng.do). Tel.: (82) 33-736-2436, 2437 for Consult and establish customized DB Provide administrative support on requests for customized DB Other administrations for the operation of customized DB.
Funding: This study was conducted with grant funding from National Health Insurance Service Ilsan Hospital (NHIMC-2022-CR-055). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish,or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
