Tag Archives: Research Design

What respiratory outcomes are important?

Posted on 31 May 2019 by keithbarrington

When bronchopulmonary dysplasia was first described by Northway in 1967 he didn’t try to produce a definition, his paper was a description of a small number of preterm survivors of high oxygen and positive pressure ventilation. He noted some years … Continue reading →

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Research Outcomes in Neonatology : must do better.

Posted on 24 May 2019 by keithbarrington

When planning a research project with neonatal patients the first question should be, what am I investigating? The PICO outline : standing for Patients, Intervention, Controls (or comparison) and Outcome, is a standardized way of asking the simple question. If … Continue reading →

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To p or not to p, what is the alternative?

Posted on 3 April 2019 by keithbarrington

I started writing the previous post several weeks ago, and, of course, the ideas are not original with me, in fact, a whole recent issue of “The American Statistician” is dedicated to not just trying to eliminate talk of statistical … Continue reading →

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To p or not to p, that is the question.

Posted on 1 April 2019 by keithbarrington

I can’t claim preference for this title, although I wish I could. I copied it from an article published in an ENT journal (Buchinsky FJ, Chadha NK. To P or Not to P: Backing Bayesian Statistics. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. … Continue reading →

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Death or oxygen, which is worse?

Posted on 27 February 2019 by keithbarrington

We have a big problem in neonatal research. We have constructed composite outcomes that have become the “standard of design”, but are not of much use for anyone. Because we are, rightly, concerned that death and other diagnoses may be … Continue reading →

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Reading Research: Subgroups and Observational studies

Posted on 1 March 2017 by keithbarrington

In publications of randomized controlled trials, subgroup analyses are frequently performed. The idea behind such analyses being to determine whether one group or another has a different result to the overall results, for example, whether boys or girls have more … Continue reading →

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Two New Publications

Posted on 15 August 2016 by keithbarrington

After a few weeks break (for a number of reasons), I’m ready to start blogging again! I’m sure you have all missed the succinct and perceptive critiques of the recent neonatal literature, but today I will start with 2 publications … Continue reading →

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The best outcome variable for very preterm newborns?

Posted on 27 November 2015 by keithbarrington

Death or ‘neurodevelopmental impairment’ (NDI) as a combined outcome has become a sort of de facto standard as the primary outcome for neonatal clinical trials. Because many very preterm infants have developmental delay, intellectual and learning difficulties, and some have … Continue reading →

Posted in Clinical Practice Guidelines, Neonatal Research | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Conflicts of interest are not all financial, but they are conflicts none the less. Name change not required.

Posted on 19 November 2015 by keithbarrington

Another poorly argued article trying to minimize the reality of conflicts of interest in medical research. Cappola AR, FitzGerald GA. Confluence, not conflict of interest: Name change necessary. JAMA. 2015;314(17):1791-2. If someone stands to have a personal advantage as a result … Continue reading →

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Late Surfactant may not be effective, probably.

Posted on 29 October 2015 by keithbarrington

A large multi-center trial (n=511) led by Roberta Ballard has just been published. (Ballard RA, et al. Randomized Trial of Late Surfactant Treatment in Ventilated Preterm Infants Receiving Inhaled Nitric Oxide. J Pediatr 2015.) In this trial infants had similar … Continue reading →

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