Qualitative Study of Surgeons With Prospective Patient Follow-up

Necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) is a devastating disease which causes severe bowel inflammation resulting in babies becoming critically unwell. It mainly affects premature babies (who can be born as early as 22 weeks) in the first few weeks of life. A quarter of babies don't respond to intensive care treatment and require surgery to remove bowel which has died to prevent them from getting sicker. Sadly, about a third of the most unwell babies don't survive and those that do have a high incidence of significant long-term health problems. Deciding which babies will benefit from surgery is challenging and there are no objective methods used to do this currently. Surgeons must weigh up the risks and benefits of performing major surgery on a tiny baby in the knowledge that surgery itself may cause harm. This uncertainty causes delays in performing surgery. Those that have a delay are more li