Perinatal palliative care and neonatal death

The morphologist called at noon: bilateral renal agenesis, anhydramnios, lethal pulmonary hypoplasia. The parents are in the corridor, terrified, and the question that will define their next twelve weeks is the one you must answer first: what do you do when a baby is going to die? Perinatal palliative care is not what happens after you have run out of obstetric interventions — it is a parallel model of care that begins the moment a life-limiting diagnosis is made, runs alongside the obstetric management, and outlasts the death by years. This topic teaches the plan, the investigations, the classification, and the script.[1][11]

Overview and definition

Perinatal death is the umbrella term. Inside it sit distinct definitions, and any rate comparison must declare its thresholds because they differ between jurisdictions:[1][2]

• Stillbirth (fetal death): death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy. In ANZ the gestational threshold for reporting varies by jurisdiction (commonly 20 weeks or 400 g, or 22 weeks in some).[1]
• Early neonatal death: death of a liveborn baby within the first 7 days of life.
• Late neonatal death: death of a liveborn baby between 7 and 28 days of life.
• Perinatal death: a fetal or neonatal death of a defined gestational or birthweight threshold — again, the threshold matters for any comparison.

Perinatal palliative care is the model of care for families facing a life-limiting fetal or neonatal diagnosis. It is what perinatal care becomes when the goal shifts from cure to comfort — and that shift can happen antenatally, intrapartum or postnatally. What it is not: a one-off conversation at the bedside after the baby has died. The systematic reviews are clear that a planned, parallel, multidisciplinary model improves parental outcomes compared with ad hoc care.[11][9]

References12Show ledgerHide ledger

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11. [11]Zanin A, Salerno A, Cavicchiolo ME, et al. A systematic review of perinatal palliative care models: challenges and opportunities for the future Eur J Pediatr, 2025.PMID 41076485
12. [12]Wood NS, Marlow N, Costeloe K, Gibson AT, Wilkinson AR Neurologic and developmental disability after extremely preterm birth. EPICure Study Group N Engl J Med, 2000.PMID 10933736