Monthly Archives: May 2012

Fluid Restricting Babies: Part 2

Posted on 30 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

While I am on a roll… Fluid restriction as a means of treating babies with BPD makes no sense. It is also unsupported by any literature. I think this practice may have arisen because diuretics are given to infants with BPD (don’t get … Continue reading →

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Fluid Restricting Babies

Posted on 29 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

A study published online first in the Journal of Pediatrics questions a common practice, the practice of fluid restricting babies who have a patent ductus arteriosus. De Buyst J, Rakza T, Pennaforte T, Johansson AB, Storme L: Hemodynamic Effects of … Continue reading →

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Neonatal Surgery and Long Term Outcomes

Posted on 27 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

A study from a group in Australia provides new data about the developmental outcomes of babies having surgery, in the medium long term. It is already clear that babies who need neonatal cardiac surgery have poorer developmental outcomes than control … Continue reading →

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Septic Shock

Posted on 25 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

This study is not neonatal at all, not even pediatric, but I think it is really important. Ranieri VM, Thompson BT, Barie PS, Dhainaut JF, Douglas IS, Finfer S, et al. Drotrecogin Alfa (Activated) in Adults with Septic Shock. N … Continue reading →

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15,000,000 preterm babies a year

Posted on 25 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

A new report from the World Health Organisation highlights the importance of prematurity as a major health problem around the world. http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/news/2012/preterm_birth_report/en/index.html Fifteen million babies are born prematurely in the world each year, and the number is increasing everywhere. You can use … Continue reading →

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Pulse Oximetry Screening for Congenital Heart Disease, an idea whose time has come

Posted on 24 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

It is now several years since the first study of using pulse oximeters to screen for congenital heart disease were published. The initial response was a little skeptical, and appropriately cautious. It was immediately clear that there would be numerous false positives … Continue reading →

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Weaning from CPAP in preterm babies

Posted on 23 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

There have been very few studies of how to wean babies from CPAP, even though it is something we do all the time. A recent tendency, which seems to have arisen without any supportive data, and which never made much sense … Continue reading →

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Encephalopathy and induced hypothermia

Posted on 22 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

The widespread use of therapeutic hypothermia for infants with encephalopathy has raised several questions. Prior to this new(ish) technique, the neurological examination of the infant was thought to have a reasonably good predictive accuracy for long term outcomes. Infants who were never … Continue reading →

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Assisted Reproduction and Neonatology

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Assisted Reproductive Technologies have a number of impacts on Neonatology. By far the most important is the increased risk of prematurity due to multiple gestation. In the USA and Canada (outside of Quebec) the frequency of multiple gestation among IVF … Continue reading →

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Hypocapnia in asphyxiated infants

Posted on 17 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Some of my posts are not necessarily going to be about very new publications, sometimes a clinical event or question stimulates me to review the literature, and I will share my findings with the readers. Spontaneous hypocapnia is not rare … Continue reading →

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