Category Archives: Neonatal Research

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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World NEC awareness day.

Posted on 17 May 2022 by Keith Barrington

As we approach world NEC awareness day (May 17th) I thought I’d do a quick PubMed search to see if I’ve missed anything recently, so I started typing “necrotizing” in the search bar, which immediately suggested “necrotizing enterocolitis” as one … Continue reading →

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Maternal breast milk is risky too

Posted on 12 May 2022 by Keith Barrington

Human breast milk, when freshly expressed, contains all sorts of goodies, to use the technical scientific term. Many of which are adversely affected by standard pasteurisation (called Holder pasteurisation, which is very similar to what Louis Pasteur himself invented in … Continue reading →

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AAP guidance on probiotics. As wrong-headed as a head can be wrong.

Posted on 9 May 2022 by Keith Barrington

The AAP issued guidance on probiotic use in the preterm infant last year in the form of what they call a “clinical report”, which I didn’t comment on at the time, I thought it might be a bit redundant as … Continue reading →

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Automated oxygen control, what’s taking so long?

Posted on 29 April 2022 by Keith Barrington

A long long time ago, in a galaxy… actually quite near here, the idea of servo control of inspired oxygen was already in the air. At the time I first heard about it, the idea was to control FiO2 based … Continue reading →

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Not neonatology: missed all my friends at PAS, but be back next year, I hope.

Posted on 26 April 2022 by Keith Barrington

I was disappointed to not be able to go to PAS this year, mostly because I am privileged to have a circle of former trainees, colleagues and friends from around the world who are all involved in trying to improve … Continue reading →

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More randomized trials of magic in newborn infants

Posted on 26 April 2022 by Keith Barrington

The scientific basis of neonatology is vitally important to me, the enormous advances that we have made have all been founded on basic and clinical science. So I can get quite agitated when I see articles reporting trials of interventions … Continue reading →

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Does knowing the genetic abnormality change management? And should it?

Posted on 22 April 2022 by Keith Barrington

Just after I pressed “post” for a recent addition to the blog, I saw this appear. (Callahan KP, et al. Influence of Genetic Information on Neonatologists’ Decisions: A Psychological Experiment. Pediatrics. 2022;149). It illustrates some major problems in how neonatologists … Continue reading →

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Long term impacts of antenatal steroids

Posted on 20 April 2022 by Keith Barrington

To return to a concern expressed in a recent blog, there are animal models and some observational data that suggest that antenatal steroids (ANS) could have a negative effect on cerebral development, at least with the doses used currently. Among … Continue reading →

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Should every baby have their Genome sequenced?

Posted on 19 April 2022 by Keith Barrington

Annie Janvier, John Lantos and I have just published an article about Next Generation Sequencing (Janvier A, et al. Next generation sequencing in neonatology: what does it mean for the next generation? Hum Genet. 2022), which is a common way … Continue reading →

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