Abstract
Neonatology is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical conditions of the newborn baby. The patients in neonatology are preterm babies with conditions of prematurity and term babies with conditions acquired during pregnancy or labor. The most severely ill neonates are treated in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Ethical issues frequently arise in the delivery room and in the NICU. These ethical issues include decisions concerning starting resuscitation and advanced life support, withholding and withdrawing treatment, neonatal euthanasia in the few jurisdictions where this is legally tolerated, disagreement within the health-care team and between the health-care team and parents, decision-making problems in relation to surrogacy, and specific issues relating to neonatal research. These ethical issues are described and analyzed in this entry.
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References
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Further Readings
Nuffield Council on Bioethics. (2006). Critical care decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine: Ethical issues. London: Nuffield council on bioethics. Available at http://nuffieldbioethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CCD-web-version-22-June-07-updated.pdf
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. (2014). Practical guidance for the management of palliative care on neonatal units. London: RCPCH. Available at http://www.bapm.org/publications/documents/guidelines/NICU-Palliative-Care-Feb-2014.pdf
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Holm, S., Holm, P. (2015). Neonatology. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_306-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_306-1
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