Figure 1.

A representative network architecture of Intestinal perforation (IP) model. The learning procedure used by ANN for the estimation of IP associated with NEC from 23 maternal and neonatal variables at birth (maternal age, maternal morbidity, chorioamnionitis, prenatal antibiotic, number of offsprings, premature rupture of membranes, gestational age, oxygen therapy (indirect oxygen, T-piece, continuous positive airway pressure, positive pressure ventilation cycles, orotracheal intubation), birth weight, sex, arterial pH, blood gas (CO₂, HCO₃, base deficit), diastolic arterial blood pressure, number of total leukocytes, neutrophils, platelets and catheter location), trained by the Levenberg-Marquardt optimization algorithm. The same architecture was used for IP estimation with birth and hospitalization variables.