Yearly Archives: 2014

Funny shaped heads? You can take the helmet off now.

Posted on 13 May 2014 by Keith Barrington

I often see kids around my hospital wearing orthotic helmets, designed to make their heads more round (some of them ex-preterms), and I often wondered if they really work. A new RCT from the Netherlands shows no effect . Renske MvW, Leo … Continue reading →

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Neonatal Updates

Posted on 12 May 2014 by Keith Barrington

Lipstein EA, Dodds CM, Britto MT. Real Life Clinic Visits Do Not Match the Ideals of Shared Decision Making. The Journal of pediatrics. 2014. The investigators video-taped discussion of higher risk interventions for chronic conditions (juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel … Continue reading →

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Prophylactic fluconazole works; but we shouldn’t use it?

Posted on 6 May 2014 by Keith Barrington

A new high quality multicenter RCT examined the effects of fluconazole prophylaxis in about 360 very tiny babies (VTB), that is they weighed less than 750g at birth. They were enrolled in the first 5 days of life to fluconazole … Continue reading →

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High Frequency Ventilation and long term pulmonary outcomes

Posted on 6 May 2014 by Keith Barrington

The UK Oscillation study (UKOS) was a large multicenter trial in the UK of high-frequency compared to conventional ventilation; 800 babies <29 weeks gestation were randomized, if they were intubated from birth and were less than 1 hour old, to … Continue reading →

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Annual PAS meeting

Posted on 6 May 2014 by Keith Barrington

Just home after an extremely busy, as usual, PAS meeting In Vancouver. Please sir, can I be excused, my brain is full. I will blog a bit about it in the next few days, in the mean time, I will … Continue reading →

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High Flow Nasal Cannulae: poor man’s CPAP?

Posted on 1 May 2014 by Keith Barrington

The title is how I sometimes refer to HFNC, but one could ask whether that is all there is to high flow, is it just another way to deliver CPAP, but with no control, or knowledge, of the pressure delivered? … Continue reading →

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Executive Function?

Posted on 29 April 2014 by Keith Barrington

Raju TNK, Mercer BM, Burchfield DJ, Joseph GF. Periviable birth: executive summary of a Joint Workshop by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American College … Continue reading →

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Necrotising Enterocolitis: is abdominal ultrasound helpful?

Posted on 29 April 2014 by Keith Barrington

I am still not convinced. (Maybe I could ask, and answer, the same thing about abdominal radiography!) In recent years in my practice we have had examples of echographic diagnosis of intramural gas in stable infants who had an abdominal … Continue reading →

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Better research, for better care

Posted on 28 April 2014 by Keith Barrington

I hope this commentary in JAMA receives a lot of ‘likes’! Eapen ZJ, Lauer MS, Temple RJ. The imperative of overcoming barriers to the conduct of large, simple trials. JAMA. 2014;311(14):1397-8. The commentary includes a report of a conference about … Continue reading →

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Retraction of a systematic review

Posted on 28 April 2014 by Keith Barrington

Exactly when should an article be retracted? That is not so easy a question to answer, fraud and significant data or image manipulation are one fairly obvious group of reasons. Making errors and/or poor research design are more tricky. When … Continue reading →

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