WHAT:  More than 2,500 former patients and their families have been invited to attend the annual reunion of the UCSF Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).  Infants cared for in the NICU generally are babies born prematurely and weighing less than 1,500 grams or requiring medical intervention, including fetal surgery.

WHEN:  Saturday, October 21, 2006
11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

WHERE: UCSF Medical Center
Saunders Court
513 Parnassus Ave.
San Francisco, CA
(Saunders Court is an outdoor area located behind the Medical Sciences building)

WHO:  Nurses, doctors and staff reunite with the babies whose lives they saved and the parents who spent the first part of their children’s lives at their bedsides in the high-tech world of intensive care. 

INTERVIEWS: 

• Parents, family members, and children.
• Neonatology specialists - on how babies’ lives are saved and how the UCSF NICU meets the challenges of today’s most high-risk infants. This includes babies saved by surgery soon after birth, and mothers and babies whose first surgery took place before the infant was born, thanks to UCSF’s pioneering Fetal Treatment Center.

CONTACT:Media interested in covering the event or arranging interviews should contact the UCSF News Office at (415) 476-2557.

ABOUT UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco is a leading university that advances health worldwide by conducting advanced biomedical research, educating graduate students in the life sciences and health professions, and providing complex patient care.