Category Archives: Neonatal Research

A life worth living? Who would want a child like that?

Posted on 5 August 2012 by Keith Barrington

A troubling tale from an adult with a handicap has just been published. (Peace WJ: Comfort care as denial of personhood. Hastings Center Report 2012, 42(4):14-17.) When admitted to an acute care hospital with a serious wound the author was … Continue reading →

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Weekly Updates #2

Posted on 29 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

Recent things that I have noted: Dennington D, Vali P, Finer NN, Kim JH: Ultrasound confirmation of endotracheal tube position in neonates. Neonatology 2012, 102(3):185-189. Bed-side ultrasound by the NICU team can confirm ETT position quickly and without radiation. This … Continue reading →

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Ventilation during Resuscitation, sustained inflations?

Posted on 20 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

I don’t post much about animal studies, but there are some things which are extremely difficult to study in human babies and at least for preliminary studies they may be essential and very informative. That great Melbourne group has been looking at the effects of … Continue reading →

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Weekly Update #1

Posted on 20 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

There are a number of interesting and/or important publications that I don’t get the time to blog about. I was thinking that maybe a weekly update which lists them with just a little description rather than a full blog post might be … Continue reading →

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Hypotension and cerebral oxygenation

Posted on 18 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

Two recent observational studies have examined how cerebral oxygenation is affected by therapies designed to increase blood pressure. The first, by Hilde Bonestroo and co-workers, studied 71 infants less than 32 weeks gestation who had a mean arterial blood pressure … Continue reading →

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Trying to improve outcomes of preterm infants

Posted on 17 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

Two recent RCTs in high risk newborns of things I would never have thought of. The first is a trial of Estradiol and Progesterone supplementation (Trotter A, Steinmacher J, Kron M, Pohlandt F. Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up at Five Years Corrected Age … Continue reading →

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More on Probiotics

Posted on 16 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

All of the accumulated evidence regarding probiotics in preterm infants to prevent necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) clearly shows that probiotic bacteria (specifically bifidobacteria and lactobacilli) are effective in reducing the incidence of NEC by more than 50%, they, as a result, reduce mortality in eligible infants. … Continue reading →

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Predicting outcomes: Adults vs Babies

Posted on 11 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

An interesting article in Archives of Internal Medicine (Chan PS, Spertus JA, Krumholz HM, Berg RA, Li Y, Sasson C, Nallamothu BK, Investigators. GWTG-RR: A validated prediction tool for initial survivors of in-hospital cardiac arrest. Arch Intern Med 2012, 172(12):1-7. http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1162169); … Continue reading →

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How to Improve Ventilation of Babies during Resuscitation

Posted on 9 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

So how do we improve resuscitation of newborn babies, and specifically of the preterm? Although I am a “true believer (TM)”  in evidence based practice it is obvious that every individual change in neonatal practice will not (and cannot) be … Continue reading →

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A toxic placebo

Posted on 8 July 2012 by Keith Barrington

One very frequently used agent in the NICU is metoclopramide, prescribed almost exclusively for gastro-esophgeal reflux, (occasionally in an attempt to improve feeding tolerance). Let us assume for a moment that a baby does have clinical signs which are due to reflux, that … Continue reading →

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