Monthly Archives: December 2013

Drug shortages

Posted on 18 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

The recent study by Kluckow and his colleagues points out another serious issue in neonatology: drug shortages. In recent times we have had poor or no supplies of dramatically important drugs, including for example indomethacin, phenobarbitone and more recently caffeine. We also … Continue reading →

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Long term outcomes after Very Extremely Preterm Delivery

Posted on 15 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

Another blog post suggested by a reader, this time from Jim Goodmar from San Diego. This study of neurological and developmental outcomes of babies born before 25 weeks is remarkable in a number of ways. (Herber-Jonat S, Streiftau S, Knauss … Continue reading →

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The PDA, indomethacin and pulmonary hemorrhages.

Posted on 15 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

In a comment on a recent post, Martin Kluckow pointed out that they have just had published a moderately sized RCT. It was supposed to be larger, but intravenous indomethacin became unavailable, so they had to stop the trial. (Kluckow … Continue reading →

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PDA shunts and extubation

Posted on 12 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

Following on from my recent post about PEEP levels and PDA shunts, this new article from Perth. The authors prospectively enrolled very immature infants (< 28 weeks) before a planned early extubation and did echocardiograms before and after. The mean … Continue reading →

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Omega 3 containing lipid emulsions for the preterm: time for a large RCT

Posted on 11 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

A recent small RCT from Turkey, n=80 (Beken S, Dilli D, Fettah ND, Kabatas EU, Zenciroglu A, Okumus N: The influence of fish-oil lipid emulsions on retinopathy of prematurity in very low birth weight infants: A randomized controlled trial. Early … Continue reading →

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PEEP and ductal shunts

Posted on 9 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

I never thought that modest increase in PEEP would have a real effect on ductal shunting. As the size of the ductal shunt depends on the pressure gradient across the PDA and the resistance of the vessel, in order to … Continue reading →

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Acid suppression doesn’t work, and it’s not safe. pHunny how we got here.

Posted on 6 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

Maybe it’s not pHunny at all. A good quality review article about the use of acid blockade for treating what are sometimes called ‘symptoms of reflux’. Rosen R: Gastroesophageal reflux in infants: More than just a pHenomenon. JAMA Pediatrics 2013. … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged | 4 Comments

Neonatal Updates: back after brief blogging break

Posted on 4 December 2013 by Keith Barrington

After a trip to Europe for ongoing planning for the HIP trial, (link on the side bar) and several days getting over the jet-lag and trying to catch up, I am ready to get going again. So here is my … Continue reading →

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