ArticleSociology of health & illness2025
Positioning comfort measures in antenatal counselling for periviable infants.
Article in Sociology of health & illness, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- At the edge of viability: neonatologists' moral experience under uncertainty in Türkiye.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Shifting the narrative: reframing paediatric palliative care to enable earlier engagement.BMJ paediatrics open · 2026Review
- End-of-life circumstances and unanticipated deaths in a neonatal intensive care unit: a retrospective analysis.BMC palliative care · 2026Article
- Positioning comfort measures in antenatal counselling for periviable infants.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Caring for the extremely premature infant born in the grey zone of viability is the most difficult area of neonatal medicine. Little research has been done on antenatal communication between neonatologists and parents anticipating the birth of a periviable infant. This article analyses 25 antenatal consultations between neonatologists and parents in one Midwestern hospital in the United States of America. It explores how neonatologists position comfort care as one of two predominant care trajectories for extremely premature infants born into the grey zone of viability. We found comfort care featured minimally in and was often marginalised by neonatologists' language. The two dominant discourses contributing to this were acute medicine's life-saving capacity and a limited temporal window marked by gestational age where comfort measures were deemed appropriate. Antenatal consultations framed by shared decision-making could be approached as a form of care characterised by a relational openness and responsiveness to parents' views on care. This asks neonatologists to enter antenatal consultations for periviability without knowing ahead of time which care trajectory will necessarily call one's attention or the particular response one should take, thus highlighting the skills of reflexivity in addition to an attentiveness and openness towards those receiving care.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.