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

Surfactant plus Budesonide? Not a PLUSS for outcomes

Posted on 14 November 2024 by Keith Barrington

Many of us were already aware of the general direction of the results of this trial, a multi-centre RCT of surfactant with or without budesonide (Manley BJ, et al. Intratracheal Budesonide Mixed With Surfactant for Extremely Preterm Infants. JAMA. 2024), … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

What Sick Babies Can Teach Us

Posted on 13 November 2024 by Keith Barrington

As usual for a TED talk this is 18 minutes long, and, in that brief time, Annie recounts her trajectory: learning from families of kids with trisomy 13 and trisomy 18; our own experience with counselling for threatened extreme preterm … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Surgery for NEC; enterostomy or anastomosis?

Posted on 7 November 2024 by Keith Barrington

There are only a few randomized trials in neonatal surgery, but those that exist have had a major impact. This new publication may do the same, even though the sample size is relatively modest, and there are some issues with … Continue reading →

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The nicuverse and 99NICU

Posted on 6 November 2024 by Keith Barrington

As some of you may have noticed, I left Twitter (X), apart from sending a link to each new post on this blog. I never any longer visit the website and I have deleted the App on my phone. A … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | 1 Comment

Making Clinical Research Oversight Fit-for-Purpose

Posted on 6 November 2024 by Keith Barrington

The title is a slightly edited copy of the title a discussion article in JAMA, that discusses some important issues in IRB oversight of clinical research. (Kass NE, et al. Making the Ethical Oversight of All Clinical Trials Fit for … Continue reading →

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Badly performed, badly presented, unethical published research; what to do?

Posted on 29 October 2024 by Keith Barrington

Since at least 2013 the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki has mandated registration of clinical trials prior to enrolment of the first subject. Since 2005 the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has required trial registration as a condition … Continue reading →

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Too much antibiotics, part 2

Posted on 28 October 2024 by Keith Barrington

The multicentre project, that I started the last post with, has just published a new important article, which addresses the duration of antibiotic treatment (Dimopoulou V, et al. Antibiotic exposure for culture-negative early-onset sepsis in late-preterm and term newborns: an … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Too much antibiotics, part 1.

Posted on 25 October 2024 by Keith Barrington

An important multi-centre observational study examines how many newborn infants, term or late-preterm are receiving antibiotics, for how long, and the responses to negative cultures. Centres from Europe, Australia and North America are represented. Data collection differs between the participants … Continue reading →

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Does preterm formula cause NEC?

Posted on 23 October 2024 by Keith Barrington

The question in the title was recently adjudicated in US courtrooms, with an enormous award of damages to the family of a premature infant who developed Necrotising Enterocolitis, and survived, but has, apparently, major neurodevelopmental issues. In July, the jury … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | 4 Comments

Long-term outcomes after preterm birth; the next step

Posted on 9 October 2024 by Keith Barrington

I usually try to avoid buzz-words and phrases like “paradigm shift” but it applies well, I think, to what is happening in the world of neonatal follow-up, and more broadly, I hope, to neonatal research as a whole. Neonatologists were … Continue reading →

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