Author Archives: Keith Barrington

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About Keith Barrington

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

15,000,000 preterm babies a year

Posted on 25 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

A new report from the World Health Organisation highlights the importance of prematurity as a major health problem around the world. http://www.who.int/pmnch/media/news/2012/preterm_birth_report/en/index.html Fifteen million babies are born prematurely in the world each year, and the number is increasing everywhere. You can use … Continue reading →

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Pulse Oximetry Screening for Congenital Heart Disease, an idea whose time has come

Posted on 24 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

It is now several years since the first study of using pulse oximeters to screen for congenital heart disease were published. The initial response was a little skeptical, and appropriately cautious. It was immediately clear that there would be numerous false positives … Continue reading →

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Weaning from CPAP in preterm babies

Posted on 23 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

There have been very few studies of how to wean babies from CPAP, even though it is something we do all the time. A recent tendency, which seems to have arisen without any supportive data, and which never made much sense … Continue reading →

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Encephalopathy and induced hypothermia

Posted on 22 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

The widespread use of therapeutic hypothermia for infants with encephalopathy has raised several questions. Prior to this new(ish) technique, the neurological examination of the infant was thought to have a reasonably good predictive accuracy for long term outcomes. Infants who were never … Continue reading →

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Assisted Reproduction and Neonatology

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Assisted Reproductive Technologies have a number of impacts on Neonatology. By far the most important is the increased risk of prematurity due to multiple gestation. In the USA and Canada (outside of Quebec) the frequency of multiple gestation among IVF … Continue reading →

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Hypocapnia in asphyxiated infants

Posted on 17 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Some of my posts are not necessarily going to be about very new publications, sometimes a clinical event or question stimulates me to review the literature, and I will share my findings with the readers. Spontaneous hypocapnia is not rare … Continue reading →

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Predicting outcomes in extremely preterm infants

Posted on 15 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Extremely preterm infants (less than 28 weeks gestation) have an increased risk of adverse neurological or developmental outcomes. A new publication from the University of Chicago emphasizes a feature that has been shown before. That among survivors, there is little difference in … Continue reading →

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Hand washing

Posted on 14 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Sometimes our discussion of infection control become somewhat theoretical, we talk about frequencies and methodologies. Here are a sequence of images that are worth a thousand words. the first 2 are from a publication in the New England Journal of … Continue reading →

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Nutrition of very preterm babies

Posted on 11 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

There is a ‘growing’ feeling that we don’t give enough protein to our preterm infants, especially during the enteral phases of nutrition. Fortified maternal breast milk use is associated with lower overall rates of weight gain, despite all its benefits. … Continue reading →

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Pain relief for intramuscular injections

Posted on 10 May 2012 by Keith Barrington

Sometimes we can’t avoid giving an IM injection, even though they are painful. Some vaccines should be given IM, and the routine needle in the thigh of every baby for vitamin K is a rite of passage, that has become standard everywhere. … Continue reading →

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