Infection.
Because late-preterm infants often exhibit signs of a possible infection, such as respiratory distress,temperature instability, and hypoglycemia, late-preterm infants are frequently evaluated for a suspected infection.Wang et al. (2004) found that the near-term population studied was three times more likely to be evaluated for sepsis than term infants. Pulver et al. (2010) found that 11% of the late-preterm infants studied had a prolonged hospital stay for treatment of suspected sepsis. Jain and Cheng(2006) found that 8.2% of late-preterm infants were read-mitted to the hospital for suspected infection, compared to 6.6% of term infants admitted for infection.