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

Anti VEGF treatment of retinopathy: and the long term?

Posted on 9 August 2022 by Keith Barrington

There remains some doubt about the impacts on cerebral development, and thus on developmental progress of anti-VEGF treated babies. It is possible that there are cerebral effects of VEGF inhibition (or interception) and it isn’t clear what the exposure of … Continue reading →

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Anti-VEGF vs laser therapy for retinopathy, not worse, but not not worse?

Posted on 3 August 2022 by Keith Barrington

A newer anti-VEGF drug has been invented, and evaluated in retinopathy therapy. This new drug aflibercept works differently to the “-mab” drugs we have been using. Those others are monoclonal antibodies (hence mab) directed against VEGF, whereas this new stuff … Continue reading →

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Resuscitation before clamping the cord?

Posted on 29 July 2022 by Keith Barrington

Delayed cord clamping is now standard of care for all deliveries, at term or preterm. In term deliveries it leads to improved iron stores in the baby which difference persists during the first year of life. In very preterm infants … Continue reading →

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Not neonatology: Adaptive Variation in the Hawaiian Honeycreepers

Posted on 28 July 2022 by Keith Barrington

The break in my posts was partly due to a vacation in Hawaii, where I was fortunate to have some time to go birding, and take some photographs of birds from a group that has a remarkable evolutionary history, but … Continue reading →

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Erythropoietin does not protect the brain, what next?

Posted on 27 July 2022 by Keith Barrington

The latest trial to fail to find a benefit of erythropoietin (Epo) for neonatal brain protection has just been published (Wu YW, et al. Trial of Erythropoietin for Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy in Newborns. N Engl J Med. 2022;387(2):148-59). The HEAL trial, … Continue reading →

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What is happening for the most preterm deliveries.The Completed Week Heuristic.

Posted on 17 June 2022 by Keith Barrington

There are several recent publications about deliveries at 22 to 25 weeks gestation, evaluating the frequency of intensive care support of the babies, factors associated with support, and survival. The California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative reports the proportion of “active … Continue reading →

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The list of shame, and the continued shame of the Journal “Pain”

Posted on 9 June 2022 by Keith Barrington

Randomized controlled trials of pain control measures prior to planned painful procedures that have an untreated control group are unethical. I would have thought in 2022 that statement was about as uncontroversial as a statement about ethics could be, nevertheless … Continue reading →

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Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia; does it matter?

Posted on 7 June 2022 by Keith Barrington

I just published a “different view” article addressing the question in the title, with a group of expert collaborators, Mai Luu who is our follow up doc in Montreal, and helps to run the Canadian Neonatal Follow-Up Network (CNFUN), Paige … Continue reading →

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Preventing desaturation during intubation. Shine on, you crazy….

Posted on 26 May 2022 by Keith Barrington

Recommendations for older children and adults during endotracheal intubation frequently include the use of free flow oxygen, indeed when I was a fellow with Neil Finer we routinely provided additional free flow oxygen from a catheter placed near the nose, … Continue reading →

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World NEC awareness day, part 2

Posted on 17 May 2022 by Keith Barrington

As well as all the high tech mechanistic studies in NEC, such as those that I just posted about, sometimes we need to take a step back and ask some very basic questions. What is the current natural history of … Continue reading →

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