Temperature instability. Wang et al. (2004) found near-term infants were 10% more likely than full-term new-borns to have temperature instability. Pulver et al. (2010) found that 31% of the infants studied had hypothermia requiring an isolette, causing 82% of these infants to have a prolonged hospital stay. Jain and Cheng (2006) found
that late-preterm infants also had a higher risk of being readmitted to the hospital for hypothermia than term
infants (2.5% vs. 0.2%). Late-preterm infants have an immature epidermal barrier and a higher ratio of surface
area to birth weight than term infants, making this popula-tion more likely to have cold stress (Mally et al., 2010).
Late-preterm infants also have less white adipose tissue for insulation and less accumulation of brown adipose tissue,
making the infants less able to generate heat from browna dipose tissue as term infants do for thermal regulation
(Engle et al., 2007).