Author Archives: keithbarrington

About keithbarrington

I am a neonatologist and clinical researcher at Sainte Justine University Health Center in Montréal

Probiotics and NEC, the latest answer?

Posted on 30 October 2020

The updated Cochrane review of probiotics for prevention of NEC, sepsis and mortality has been published. Meta-analysis showed that probiotics may reduce the risk of NEC: RR 0.54, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.65 (54 trials, 10,604 infants; I2 = 17%); … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Quality of life cannot be predicted from a brain scan

Posted on 23 September 2020

…either ultrasound or MRI, or by EEG, or neurological examination, or even during follow-up by screening for disabilities. That title is from a recently published editorial (Fayed N, et al. Quality of life cannot be predicted from a brain scan. … Continue reading →

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What happened to the HeROs?

Posted on 22 September 2020

I had to find a way of changing HeRO to Heroes as an excuse for posting a link to this video But also the results of a long term follow up of the HeRO trial have been published. The original … Continue reading →

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CRP can suggest that babies are not infected, when you already know!

Posted on 21 September 2020

I wrote a blog post about 3 years ago about a study examining procalcitonin use in neonatal early-onset sepsis. You can see from my post that the authors didn’t, to my mind, show any utility of procalcitonin (PCT) either alone … Continue reading →

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Breast milk fortifiers, a new systematic review

Posted on 21 September 2020

A systematic review has just been published which compares the outcomes of milk fortification with bovine-milk derived fortifier and human-milk derived fortifier. (Grace E, et al. Safety and efficacy of human milk-based fortifier in enterally fed preterm and/or low birthweight … Continue reading →

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Evidence-Based Neonatology: more and more evidence, better and better care

Posted on 20 September 2020

For another project, which I will explain later, I have been trying to find recent large multicentre trials in very preterm babies. I searched PubMed for “Randomized Controlled Trial’, and “Multicentre study”, then filtered by Human and Newborn and Preterm … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged | 7 Comments

My new watch has a pulse oximeter?!

Posted on 18 September 2020

I recently bought a smartwatch, I won’t say which model because what I found is now available on several makes of watch. I discovered when playing around with the Apps that there was one which claimed to measure blood oxygen … Continue reading →

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Does LISA protect your brain?

Posted on 17 September 2020

A few years ago now a multicenter RCT among infants of 23 to 26 weeks gestation showed that LISA was possible in even these most immature infants., NINSAPP. Kribs A, et al. Nonintubated Surfactant Application vs Conventional Therapy in Extremely … Continue reading →

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Delayed cord clamping in the very preterm

Posted on 10 September 2020

I haven’t written about this issue in a while, the APTS trial, and the systematic review which was published at about the same time appeared to show definitively that there was a reduction in mortality with delayed clamping compared to … Continue reading →

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Diagnosing seizures in the newborn: a small step forward

Posted on 31 August 2020

The use of continuous EEG has become much more frequent in the NICU in recent years. It has become clear that clinical recognition of seizures, both those with and without clinical convulsions (which I will call electrographic seizures for all … Continue reading →

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