Neonatology

The Department of Neonatology of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, as one of the subspecialties of pediatrics, is a key specialty of Liaoning Province and Dalian City, and the Liaoning Provincial Critical Neonatal Rescue Center. The department has a highly skilled, pioneering and innovative medical and nursing team, including 7 physicians: 1 doctoral supervisor, 2 master's supervisors, 2 chief physicians, 1 associate chief physician and 3 attending physicians. All hold master's degrees or higher, including 1 physician with a doctoral degree and 4 physicians currently pursuing doctoral degrees.

The department has functional units including a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), preterm infant ward, phototherapy room, isolation room and mother-and-infant wards, with a total area of 320m2 and 38 beds, including 16 rescue beds. The department is equipped with class-10,000 laminar-flow equipment and a modern monitoring center, neonatal-specific conventional-frequency and high-frequency ventilators, various noninvasive ventilators and air-oxygen blenders, advanced neonatal incubators and radiant resuscitation tables, transcutaneous bilirubin meters, dedicated blue-light therapy boxes, blue-light therapy lamps and blue-light therapy blankets, as well as bedside blood gas analyzers, bedside color Doppler ultrasound machines, bedside DR radiography machines, auditory evoked potential equipment, neonatal transport incubators, therapeutic hypothermia devices and NO therapy devices, along with other advanced instruments and equipment, creating favorable conditions for the diagnosis, treatment and nursing care of neonatal diseases.

The department is proficient in carrying out a variety of the latest treatment technologies in China and abroad, including invasive conventional-frequency and high-frequency respiratory support technologies for the treatment of critically ill neonates with severe neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, severe pneumonia, neonatal respiratory failure, neonatal pulmonary hemorrhage, persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn and other acute and critical illnesses; various noninvasive respiratory support technologies, such as HFOV, NIPPV, BiPAP and HHFNC, to provide effective respiratory support and lung-protection strategies for extremely preterm infants (gestational age <28 weeks) and extremely low birth weight infants (birth weight <1000g); umbilical venous catheterization and peripherally inserted central venous catheterization (PICC) for central venous infusion; therapeutic hypothermia for neuroprotection and symptomatic supportive treatment of severe neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy; and simultaneous arteriovenous exchange transfusion for the treatment of severe hyperbilirubinemia. The department has also achieved good results through multidisciplinary collaboration in the treatment of critically ill neonates. The neonatal and young-infant outpatient clinic (within 6 months of age) provides disease diagnosis and treatment and nursing guidance, follow-up of high-risk neonates, developmental assessment and feeding guidance for preterm infants, jaundice monitoring, hip ultrasound examinations, and fundus follow-up for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).

At the same time, the department places great emphasis on teaching and scientific research. It undertakes theoretical teaching and clinical training for medical students at multiple levels, including doctoral and master's graduate students, five-year clinical medicine students, 5+3 clinical medicine students, 5+3 pediatrics students, visiting trainees and standardized-training resident physicians, and is a national standardized residency training base. Several faculty members have led provincial- and university-level teaching reform projects and have achieved excellent results in teachers' teaching competitions held by the hospital and the university on many occasions. Research on neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, neonatal respiratory support and the mechanisms of neonatal jaundice is at an advanced level. The department has completed 2 National Natural Science Foundation of China general projects and 3 municipal bureau research projects, and has received 1 Second Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress at the provincial level. More than 80 papers have been published, including 3 SCI papers.