Category Archives: Neonatal Research

Recently my heart betrayed me…

Posted on 22 October 2021 by keithbarrington

Recently my heart betrayed me, after more than 60 years of excellent service it decided to beat far too quickly. My atria started to beat at nearly 300 times per minute, and my ventricles, unable to beat that fast, responded … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | 10 Comments

How often does Whole Genome Sequencing really help the baby? Or their family?

Posted on 21 October 2021 by keithbarrington

It is a long time since I have written anything on this blog about the above issue, I have an article in submission to the real scientific literature with some illustrious co-authors, but I was prompted to write this blog … Continue reading →

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Neonatal Updates

Posted on 18 October 2021 by keithbarrington

It’s a long time since I did one of these, but there were several publications that I thought warranted a quick comment. Abbey NV, et al. Electrocardiogram for heart rate evaluation during preterm resuscitation at birth: a randomized trial. Pediatr … Continue reading →

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Delivering better CPAP in the delivery room, can we avoid intubation in the most immature babies?

Posted on 7 October 2021 by keithbarrington

Randomized trials have shown that trying to prevent intubation in the DR leads to less severe lung injury. The Cochrane review of prophylactic CPAP compared to immediate intubation included 3 trials (SUPPORT, COIN and DR Management study), that review found … Continue reading →

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Babies feel pain, and they remember it!

Posted on 6 October 2021 by keithbarrington

I usually don’t post about studies of painful procedures where there was no analgesic prophylaxis in some of the the subjects, except to criticize them, and if they are recent, to call for their retraction. So when I first saw … Continue reading →

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Intestinal perforation in the very preterm, what causes it, and what to do about it.

Posted on 24 September 2021 by keithbarrington

There are 2 main causes of intestinal perforation in the very preterm, Necrotising Enterocolitis and Spontaneous Perforation. NEC, as I have previously discussed, may be a convenient name for a few different conditions which present in a similar fashion. In … Continue reading →

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Extreme preterm survival and outcomes

Posted on 16 September 2021 by keithbarrington

There are frequently publications about the outcomes of extreme preterm infants; as a community I think we should be proud of our investment in outcome research. Indeed, neonatologists invented the entire field of outcomes research (Barrington KJ, Saigal S. Long-term … Continue reading →

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Opioid infusions for ventilated preterm babies

Posted on 13 September 2021 by keithbarrington

Many practices in neonatology are variable between NICUs, and many vary from year to year; without any good scientific data practices become fashionable or routine or ingrained without necessarily having an evidence base to support them. One such practice is … Continue reading →

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Drug use and abuse in the NICU

Posted on 2 September 2021 by keithbarrington

The title does not refer to”drugs of abuse” but rather to how we use and choose medications for use in newborns, particularly the very immature. A new publication has just appeared on-line which focuses of medication use in the NICU, … Continue reading →

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Pain studies with untreated control groups in babies are unethical.

Posted on 19 August 2021 by keithbarrington

If you are performing a study of pain control in the newborn and you assign babies to untreated controls, you are creating unnecessary avoidable pain in the control patients. That is true for any patient who is incompetent, obviously including … Continue reading →

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