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The birth of a baby is usually a joyous event, but when a child is born too early, worrisome complications can occur, including serious health problems for the baby and steep medical bills for the family. To address this, Johns Hopkins graduate students and their faculty adviser have invented a new system to pick up very early signs that a woman is going into labor too soon.
The normal length of a pregnancy is 40 weeks, while babies born before 37 weeks gestation are considered to be preterm. By detecting preterm contractions with greater accuracy and sensitivity than existing tools, the new system could allow doctors to take steps at an earlier stage to prevent premature births, its inventors say.
The health concerns and costs associated with premature births have received increasing attention in recent years, due in part to a rise in the number of multiple births, the use of fertility treatments, which can cause multiple births, and to an increase in women who are having babies later in life. These trends are all associated with a higher risk of preterm labor.
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