Maternal and infant transport program in Louisiana.

The concept of maternal transport has evolved from that of neonatal transport as part of a regionalized perinatal care system. Experience has suggested that perinatal outcome for infants transported before delivery is improved over that for infants transported neonatally. This report describes the initial 2 years' experience of the first such program in Louisiana. When compared with infants transported after delivery, those transported before delivery had a slightly better corrected survival rate (90 versus 87%) and a shorter average stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (11.8 versus 21.4 days), but the differences were not statistically significant as measured by the chi2 test.