Category Archives: Neonatal Research

Neonatal updates

Posted on 10 April 2018 by Keith Barrington

This post is  a bit of a catch up, to mention articles that are worth reading, but which I didn’t have time to write a full post about, in particular studies that could have a positive impact on clinical care. … Continue reading →

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Shake it up baby

Posted on 9 April 2018 by Keith Barrington

When babies have respiratory pauses, the usual initial intervention is tactile stimulation of some kind. Which leads to a few questions: does it work? how does it work (if it does)? what mode of stimulation is most effective? If you … Continue reading →

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Parents as Partners

Posted on 6 April 2018 by Keith Barrington

One of the initiatives in our NICU is the implication of former parents of NICU patients; we have been examining ways of integrating former parents as support/resource/information sources for parents who arrive in neonatology with little idea of what to … Continue reading →

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Quoted in “nature”

Posted on 5 April 2018 by Keith Barrington

An interesting and well-written article in nature (or, at least, a supplement called “nature outlook”) by a scientific journalist Sarah DeWeerdt has appeared, discussing the acquisition of the intestinal microbiome by newborn infants. She discusses premature infants and the role … Continue reading →

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Reducing medical errors

Posted on 4 April 2018 by Keith Barrington

There has been a lot of activity recently around a case that happened several years ago. In a hospital in the UK a boy with trisomy 21 was admitted, with signs of infection, and he deteriorated and died. Several signs … Continue reading →

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Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, does it make you feel like a DIC?

Posted on 4 April 2018 by Keith Barrington

Influenza is crap. Especially when you get it even though you have had the vaccine! The break in blog posts has been due to an assortment of viral illnesses, culminating in the “flu” and then followed by spring break, followed … Continue reading →

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Breast Milk is good for you; does it matter how you get it?

Posted on 14 February 2018 by Keith Barrington

The benefits of human, especially mother’s own, breast milk are unambiguous, but is expressed breast milk as good as direct breast-feeding? A new cohort study from Canada (Klopp A, et al. Modes of Infant Feeding and the Risk of Childhood … Continue reading →

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Probiotics might save lives in low-resource countries

Posted on 5 February 2018 by Keith Barrington

After several years of preliminary investigations,  a huge RCT has been published from India (Panigrahi P, et al. A randomized synbiotic trial to prevent sepsis among infants in rural India. Nature. 2017;548:407.) which enrolled babies over 2 kg birth weight … Continue reading →

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Endotracheal intubation, making it safer for babies

Posted on 5 February 2018 by Keith Barrington

Many of our patients need invasive ventilatory support, for which endotracheal intubation is required, but we intubate many fewer babies than in the past. We also very rarely intubate babies for endotracheal suction to remove meconium any longer. Which means … Continue reading →

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Does tactile stimulation in the delivery room actually do anything?

Posted on 2 February 2018 by Keith Barrington

One of the things that is done in neonatal resuscitation that isn’t part of resuscitating older patients is tactile stimulation. Babies who are apneic and/or floppy often receive stimulation in the form of rubbing the back, patting or flicking the … Continue reading →

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