In Reply.—We reported that all infants in the study group were admitted within eight hours after birth. This implies that not all infants were born in our hospital, since they were admitted immediately after birth. We are very well aware of the fact that infants transported from other centers have a higher risk of developing PIVH, mainly because of insufficient supportive respiratory care in the first hours after birth, leading to hypoxia, hypercarbia, and acidosis, which are important antecedents of PIVH in preterm infants.
It is indeed true that our data were collected prospectively as mentioned in the text; also, our hypothesis is clearly explained in the introduction of our article.
We agree that one has to be very careful in drawing conclusions when data are compared from two different study groups. Therefore, after having studied the association of PIVH and the various previously determined perinatal factors, we formed