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

Is your brain really necessary?

I remember years ago watching a BBC documentary (I think it was BBC) with the tabloid-type title “is your brain really necessary?” it focused on patients with severe hydrocephalus who had normal neurological examinations and normal intellect. One was, if I … Continue reading →

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Lactoferrin again, this time the human kind

Sherman MP, et al. Randomized Controlled Trial of Talactoferrin Oral Solution in Preterm Infants. The Journal of pediatrics. 2016. This should be characterized as a pilot trial, as there were only 60 patients per group, and as a trial of … Continue reading →

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RV function in BPD

Sehgal A, et al. Right Ventricular Function in Infants with Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia: Association with Respiratory Sequelae. Neonatology. 2016;109(4):289-96. Babies with BPD frequently have some degree of pulmonary hypertension, which may lead to right ventricular dysfunction. Arvind Seghal and colleagues studied … Continue reading →

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Caffeine protects the lungs

From the CAP trial we know that caffeine administration leads to less bronchopulmonary dysplasia. The question is how? The mechanism could help to design other studies, or help in a decision about clinical use where the question hasn’t been directly … Continue reading →

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Tattoos, Beer and Bow-ties, a worthy follow up to “Pepperoni Pizza and sex”

Annie Janvier has just had another article published on-line, in JAMAPediatrics. The full title is “Tattoos, Beer, and Bow Ties: The Limits of Professionalism in Medicine”  It tells of a day when she met a patient’s father for the first time … Continue reading →

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Meta-analysis of the oxygen trials, including the long term outcomes

This new publication is not a complete systematic review, but is a review of the history, design and outcomes of the oxygen saturation targeting trials, and of the early stopping of 2 trials. Stenson BJ. Oxygen Saturation Targets for Extremely Preterm … Continue reading →

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New Pages on the blog

I am in the process of re-organizing the “Important Neonatal Publications” page, into a number of sub-pages with topics. It was getting a bit long and hard to find anything you are particularly interested in. I will be adding more … Continue reading →

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Seizures are bad for you

Fox CK, et al. Neonatal seizures triple the risk of a remote seizure after perinatal ischemic stroke. Neurology. 2016. This analysis of a Kaiser Permanente database had 87 children with perinatal strokes. Those who had seizures during the neonatal period had … Continue reading →

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Give poor pregnant women cash

Tommy Douglas was a former professional boxer, who was also a Baptist minister, and is the father of Canadian Medicare. He was from the Canadian Prairies, has been referred to as the ‘greatest Canadian of all time’ and worked tirelessly … Continue reading →

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Outcomes of babies with surgical anomalies

Neonatologists basically invented the field of outcomes research; many of my colleagues from around the world have closely examined the outcomes of very premature and extremely premature infants for many years: well before people in other fields were doing so. Outcome … Continue reading →

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