Neonatology is one of the many branches of medicine, specifically pediatrics, which focuses mainly on the analysis and study of diseases that affect human beings in their first 28 days of life. This, however, should not be confused with the work performed by pediatricians during this same period of the infant, who are in charge of everything related to breastfeeding and medical care from birth; neonatology specialists, for their part, only take care of those children who are born with a disease, are premature or are underweight.
This word has its origin in the combination of two Greek words and one Latin, being νέο or neo, “new”, from the Latin natus, “born” and from the Greek λογία or logía. This branch of medicine was born due to the high rates of infant mortality that existed in the 19th century. It was in this same century that the first incubator rooms for newborns were installed in the United States, since the premature death of infants began to be related because they could not regulate their body temperature adequately, so they had to be introduced into the incubators. Other advances in the field was the one contributed by Dr. Virginia Apgar, called the Apgar test., with which the conditions in which a newborn is found are evaluated.
In recent years, great advances have been observed in neonatology, since the urgency of controlling the numbers of deaths that occur during the first 28 days of life. In both developed and emerging countries, studies have been carried out and an effort has been made so that newborn children have the most favorable living conditions.
