China urgently needs to improve neonatal diagnosis and treatment guidelines for babies suffering respiratory failure, experts from Fudan University's Children's Hospital said yesterday.

The call came after new research found almost one in three babies in China suffering neonatal respiratory failure died.

The research, the first nationwide study on neonatal respiratory care, was published in Pediatrics, a United States-based pediatric journal.

Fudan University's Children's Hospital teamed up with 22 other hospitals from Shanghai, Chongqing and 10 provinces, to research the incidence, cause and treatment of NRF. It found about 13.2 percent of 13,070 researched newborns had the condition and 32 percent of these died between 2004 and 2005.

"About half of the deaths were due to unsuccessful treatment," said research supervisor, Dr Sun Bo from the hospital's department of pediatrics. He cited NRF as the top cause for death in neonatal intensive care unit.

"The in-hospital mortality of infants with NRF was only 14.6 percent in Italy and 11.1 percent in the United States in the early 1990s."

Experts said many Chinese guidelines were copied from Western hospitals, which often had better equipment and systems.

"We want to find practical guidance with direct relevance to Chinese doctors and hospitals to enhance NRF treatment," Sun said.

(Shanghai Daily June 4, 2008)