Monthly Archives: July 2012

Weekly Updates #2

Recent things that I have noted: Dennington D, Vali P, Finer NN, Kim JH: Ultrasound confirmation of endotracheal tube position in neonates. Neonatology 2012, 102(3):185-189. Bed-side ultrasound by the NICU team can confirm ETT position quickly and without radiation. This … Continue reading

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‘Our children are not a diagnosis’ – what an amazing response!

This blog was initially intended mostly for health professionals (especially neonatologists and pediatricians in training) and others interested in academic neonatology, with the hope that some other people might find it interesting. The reaction to my post on Annie Janvier’s … Continue reading

Posted in Advocating for impaired children | 3 Comments

“Our children are not a diagnosis”: the family experience of trisomy 13 and 18

Annie Janvier, Barb Farlow and Ben Wilfond have just published a rather disturbing study. At least I feel a bit disturbed. (Janvier A, Farlow B, Wilfond BS: The experience of families with children with trisomy 13 and 18 in social … Continue reading

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Ventilation during Resuscitation, sustained inflations?

I don’t post much about animal studies, but there are some things which are extremely difficult to study in human babies and at least for preliminary studies they may be essential and very informative. That great Melbourne group has been looking at the effects of … Continue reading

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Weekly Update #1

There are a number of interesting and/or important publications that I don’t get the time to blog about. I was thinking that maybe a weekly update which lists them with just a little description rather than a full blog post might be … Continue reading

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Hypotension and cerebral oxygenation

Two recent observational studies have examined how cerebral oxygenation is affected by therapies designed to increase blood pressure. The first, by Hilde Bonestroo and co-workers, studied 71 infants less than 32 weeks gestation who had a mean arterial blood pressure … Continue reading

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Trying to improve outcomes of preterm infants

Two recent RCTs in high risk newborns of things I would never have thought of. The first is a trial of Estradiol and Progesterone supplementation (Trotter A, Steinmacher J, Kron M, Pohlandt F. Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up at Five Years Corrected Age … Continue reading

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More on Probiotics

All of the accumulated evidence regarding probiotics in preterm infants to prevent necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) clearly shows that probiotic bacteria (specifically bifidobacteria and lactobacilli) are effective in reducing the incidence of NEC by more than 50%, they, as a result, reduce mortality in eligible infants. … Continue reading

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Predicting outcomes: Adults vs Babies

An interesting article in Archives of Internal Medicine (Chan PS, Spertus JA, Krumholz HM, Berg RA, Li Y, Sasson C, Nallamothu BK, Investigators. GWTG-RR: A validated prediction tool for initial survivors of in-hospital cardiac arrest. Arch Intern Med 2012, 172(12):1-7. http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1162169); … Continue reading

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How to Improve Ventilation of Babies during Resuscitation

So how do we improve resuscitation of newborn babies, and specifically of the preterm? Although I am a “true believer (TM)”  in evidence based practice it is obvious that every individual change in neonatal practice will not (and cannot) be … Continue reading

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