The pause could be the difference between life and death, according to University of Sydney, University of Nottingham and National Childbirth Trust researchers, whose analysis of dozens of studies and trials covering over 9,000 infants found that a delay of between half a minute and 2 minutes cuts the risk of the baby dying by a third. The team claimed they had gathered "high-certainty evidence that deferred cord clamping, compared with immediate cord clamping, reduces death before discharge in preterm infants.