Loyola to be included in "Guinness World Records" 2015 edition for neonatal care

Loyola University Medical Center will be included in the "Guinness World Records" 2015 edition for caring for the world's smallest baby.

Loyola has maintained the Guinness world record for 26 years. Madeline Mann set the record in 1989 after she was born at Loyola weighing 9.9 ounces. She recently graduated from college. In 2004, Rumaisa Rahman set a new record after she was born at Loyola weighing 9.2 ounces. She remains the world's smallest surviving baby, according to a registry kept by the University of Iowa Children's Hospital.

Rahman is one of more than 3,000 newborns cared for in Loyola's neonatal intensive care unit who have weighed less than 2 pounds. The overall survival rate of infants in Loyola's NICU is 98 percent.

As a Level III perinatal center, Loyola Medicine offers the latest technology, therapies and techniques and serves as a national model for specialized protocols and practices in the care of premature infants.

"Loyola has become a national leader in neonatal care," said Jonathan Muraskas, MD, co-medical director of Loyola's NICU and a professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Obstetrics & Gynecology, divisions of Neonatology and Maternal-Fetal Medicine of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. "Our medical, nursing and respiratory experience and knowledge allow us to provide the highest level of care for high-risk infants."

This care is provided in a highly secure area of the hospital with 50 tiny beds for the hospital's smallest patients. Each baby is assigned a team of nurses who care for the infant day after day. This creates continuity in care and allows the nurses to establish a relationship with the infants and their families. Many of these nurses have worked at Loyola for more than two decades.

Loyola nurses staff a first-of-its-kind, integrated home-care program for premature or sick infants. The unit also provides a follow-up clinic for high-risk NICU graduates to undergo developmental screening and referral care during the first three years of life.