Neonatology Outpatient Clinic（越秀院区）

The Department of Neonatology of Guangdong Women and Children Hospital was established in 1993. After more than 20 years of development, it has grown into a National Clinical Key Specialty, a National Specialty with Distinctive Neonatal Healthcare Features, a National Training Base for Neonatal Perinatal Medicine, and a High-Level Clinical Specialty of Guangdong Province; it is also the Guangdong Provincial Quality Control Center for Neonatal Critical Care Medicine and the Guangdong Provincial Critical Neonatal Treatment Center. It has received the titles of “National Youth Civilization Unit” and “National Women’s Civilization Post.” The department has strong service capacity and robust technical expertise. The Panyu, Yuexiu, and Tianhe campuses have a total of 200 open beds. Eight subspecialties have been established: neonatal respiratory medicine, infectious diseases, gastroenterology and nutrition, cardiology, genetic metabolism and jaundice, retinopathy of prematurity, neurology, and circulation. Family wards and daytime phototherapy wards have also been set up to reduce mother–infant separation. More than 8,000 critically ill neonates are admitted annually. The department provides core neonatal intensive care technologies, including continuous hemofiltration and plasma exchange, peritoneal dialysis, inhaled nitric oxide therapy, stepwise respiratory support, mild hypothermia therapy for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, screening and treatment of retinopathy of prematurity, NGS pathogen sequencing and second-generation gene sequencing, prehospital emergency care for critically ill neonates, and central venous catheterization. The lowest birth weight successfully treated was 550 grams, and the lowest gestational age at survival was 24 weeks; it also successfully treated quintuplets born at 28 weeks’ gestation. Forty-three neonatal specialty medical alliances have been established throughout the province, and nearly 1,000 critically ill neonates from within the province and South China are transported annually. Based on its critical care treatment platform, the department has continuously developed a multidisciplinary treatment system. In collaboration with the departments of neonatal surgery, the heart center, neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, otolaryngology, stomatology, and others, it has performed highly challenging procedures, including modified Barbero-Marcial surgery for pulmonary atresia; extratracheal external fixation stenting for tracheomalacia and modified slide tracheoplasty for tracheal stenosis; transventricular balloon pulmonary valvuloplasty for congenital pulmonary valve atresia; thoracoscopic and laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery for congenital gastrointestinal malformations; thoracoscopic minimally invasive surgery for severe congenital pulmonary and thoracic malformations; Ommaya reservoir implantation for ventriculomegaly after intracranial hemorrhage; and mandibular osteotomy with distraction osteogenesis for micrognathia. Patients are admitted from more than 20 provinces across the country. The department serves as an internship and teaching site for graduate and undergraduate students of Guangzhou Medical University and Jinan University. In 2018, it became a National Training Base for Neonatal Perinatal Medicine; in 2023, it became a partner institution of Jinan University’s postdoctoral practice base and was authorized to recruit postdoctoral researchers. The department has 45 physicians, including 3 doctoral supervisors, 4 master’s supervisors, and 7 chief physicians; 2 Guangdong Provincial medical leading and young leading talents; 2 chairpersons of national academic organizations; and 7 chairpersons of academic organizations at or above the provincial level. The specialty places great emphasis on talent development and has sent nearly 20 people on study visits abroad to the United States, Australia, Italy, and Singapore, continuously improving the clinical, research, and teaching capabilities and standards of its key personnel. The department’s main research strengths are studies related to the prevention and treatment of retinopathy of prematurity, applications of umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells in complications of preterm infants, a series of studies on continuous improvement of neonatal healthcare quality, and research on the application of stepwise respiratory support in preterm infants. Over the past 5 years, the department has led 3 National Natural Science Foundation of China projects and 9 provincial- and ministerial-level projects, published 98 papers, including 43 SCI-indexed papers, led the development of 20 expert consensuses related to the prevention and treatment of neonatal diseases in China, obtained 14 national invention and utility model patents, edited 4 monographs, and received 4 provincial- and ministerial-level science and technology achievement awards. Relying on the Provincial Quality Control Center for Neonatal Critical Care Medicine, the department is committed to building a province-wide neonatal healthcare safety system, developing a medical quality information collection system, and formulating quality control standards. Based on its powerful treatment capacity, it is working to develop a province-wide cloud-based information transfer system for critically ill neonates under the Women and Children Healthcare initiative, continuously improving the quality of treatment for critically ill neonates throughout the province and better safeguarding neonatal safety within the region.