Monthly Archives: February 2017

Survival of extremely preterm babies, part 3. A regional European comparison. If you don’t treat them, they will die.

Posted on 24 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

Hard on the heels of the publication discussed in the previous post, a new publication comparing interventions and outcomes for babies at the same sort of gestational ages from 12 regions in 5 different European countries (if we can still … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | 2 Comments

Survival of extremely preterm babies in a national cohort, and a comparison of nations.

Posted on 24 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

As a follow up to my last post, a new article from Norway details the survival to one year of age, and the neonatal morbidities of babies born at 22 to 26 weeks gestation in the whole country in 2013-2014. … Continue reading →

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Improved survival and improved Bayley scores among infants born in the periviable period.

Posted on 21 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

If you were to report survival and other outcomes among infants with a very high risk of dying or having long-term impairments, why would you include babies for whom a decision was made to let them die? Let me put … Continue reading →

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Fluid restriction to prevent BPD?

Posted on 14 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

In response to my previous post, one of the comments was a question about fluid volumes in the first few days of life, and whether fluid and/or sodium intake was important for the development of BPD during the early neonatal … Continue reading →

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Fluid restriction as treatment for BPD? This time with the summary of findings table.

Posted on 13 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

I realize that many of my gentle readers may not have access to the Cochrane reviews in full text as soon as they are published. The NICHD do provide free access to the neonatal reviews, (together with a useful introduction … Continue reading →

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New Publication: Does fluid restriction improve the clinical status of babies with BPD?

Posted on 10 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

I have never been convinced that fluid restriction is a good thing for kids with BPD. I think the common practice came about because of the short-term improvements in lung function that sometimes follow if you start diuretics. The idea … Continue reading →

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The FDA warns against anaesthesia in the very young

Posted on 10 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

There has been accumulating evidence of the potential risks of anaesthetic agents, such as risks of enhanced apoptosis in animal models and long-term functional effects in  those various animal models also. All anaesthetic agents appear to be affected, which I … Continue reading →

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Premature labour changes a mother’s brain, and her baby’s

Posted on 7 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

In this rather weird, but interesting study from Italy, 10 mothers of preterm babies (less than 32 weeks or less than 1500 grams) without ultrasound brain injury or severe retinopathy, and 11 mothers of full term babies were shown photos … Continue reading →

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Should we freeze maternal breast milk in the NICU? Pasteurize it?

Posted on 1 February 2017 by Keith Barrington

Maternal breast milk is what we should be giving to every preterm infant as much as possible. But we know that there are cases of transmission of cytomegalovirus (CMV) and reports of transmission of other pathogens to babies from breast … Continue reading →

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