Tag Archives: Ethics

Active intervention at 22 weeks gestation, is it futile?

Posted on 29 October 2018 by

In order to respond to the question posed in the title we need first to agree on what “futile” means. It could mean “it never works” or, “it can work but the ultimate result is so bad that it isn’t … Continue reading →

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New Published Letter, a response to the ‘number needed to suffer’.

Posted on 2 February 2018 by

The new issue of Acta Paediatrica (Februray 2018) includes a letter I wrote in response to a commentary written by a paediatric anaesthetist, Dr Lönnqvist. If you receive an email with a description of the contents of each issue, as … Continue reading →

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Time to abandon the Papile classification? (part 2)

Posted on 7 December 2017 by

As I mentioned in the last post, the initial report of outcomes by Bassan and others showed that the infants with severity score 0, (unilateral haemorrhage without midline shift affecting one zone) had reasonably good outcomes, 7 of 8 had … Continue reading →

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The end of the Papile classification? (part 1)

Posted on 28 November 2017 by

In 1978 Lu-Ann Papile published a landmark article detailing the incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) in 46 VLBW preterm infants using CT scanning, describing the differing extent of hemorrhage that may be seen, and developing a grading system (there are … Continue reading →

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Ethical conflicts and moral distress in the NICU, are they all bad?

Posted on 23 November 2017 by

The term “moral distress” was coined by nursing researchers who were, generally, referring to situations in which nurses were constrained to act in opposition to their ethical beliefs, usually by having to follow medical orders that they disagreed with. More … Continue reading →

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Guidelines to help parents who have lost one of twins

Posted on 5 November 2017 by

Many readers of this blog will recognize the name of Nick Embleton as someone who has done a great deal of nutrition research, and research into the intestinal microbiome of very preterm infants. He also has a major interest in … Continue reading →

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Longer-term outcomes of very preterm babies, what should we measure, when and why?

Posted on 29 March 2017 by

Two recent articles have discussed the issue of what outcomes we should measure to analyze neurological and developmental progress in the preterm baby. Both are thoughtful critical pieces that say many things that we need to think about as we … Continue reading →

Posted in Neonatal Research | Tagged , | 4 Comments