Monthly Archives: September 2015

NICUs are working better: still room for improvement.

Posted on 11 September 2015 by Keith Barrington

As NICUs have become more effective, any proportional incremental improvements will necessarily get smaller, so larger and larger datasets will be needed to show any trends. The NICHD has just published data about survival and major acute morbidities among extremely … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

How long is too long?

Posted on 11 September 2015 by Keith Barrington

When a baby is unexpectedly born without a heart beat, and resuscitation is initiated, the outcome may be a failed resuscitation. Even if everything is done correctly. If you are doing everything correctly, and the baby doesn’t respond right away, … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

The new AAP position statement concerning extremely preterm birth decision making. A great leap… sideways.

Posted on 8 September 2015 by Keith Barrington

To me, this new ‘clinical report’ was a major disappointment. Even though there are some good parts to this statement, there is one huge, major failing: there is absolutely no evidence that parents were consulted or included in the process of … Continue reading →

Posted in Clinical Practice Guidelines | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Writing Clinical Practice Guidelines, who should be involved?

Posted on 3 September 2015 by Keith Barrington

Clinical Practice Guidelines are important for improving quality of care and uniformity of practice. Or at least they should be. There have been studies of the impact of guidelines, and it is variable, and sometimes negligible. Why is that? Why … Continue reading →

Posted in Clinical Practice Guidelines | Tagged | 2 Comments

Pain is bad for you, sucrose makes it better (even if you are a rat).

Posted on 2 September 2015 by Keith Barrington

I rarely discuss animal research in this blog, but occasionally something striking stimulates a new post. I have discussed sucrose not that long ago, in particular I emphasized the over-interpretation of a secondary analysis of a non-randomized comparison of very … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , , | 6 Comments