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About this blog

I am a Neonatologist trained in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Edmonton, Alberta.  My current position is Section Head of Neonatology in Manitoba and over my career my interests have meandered from time to time.  I have been a past Program Director of Neonatology and Medical Director for a level II Intensive Care Unit prior to relocating to Winnipeg become a Section Head.

Welcome to my blog which I hope will provide a forum for discussion on topics that are of interest to Neonatologists, trainees, all health care professionals and in some cases parents of those we care for.  My intent is to post opinions and analysis on both items from the media and literature that pertain to neonates.  While I have many interests, my particular motivation is to find ways to reduce discomfort for the patients that we care for.  Whether it is through the use of non-invasive testing or finding a way to improve the patient experience this is where I find myself most energized.

I chose the picture for this site as since the inception of this site there is hardly a country that has not had an individual or many people view posts.  Moreover I have received comments from many people from so many different countries that have inspired me to think not just about the impact of these posts in North America but more globally as well.

If you like what you see and would like updates to be sent to you as they are published feel free to follow the site by clicking the follow button on the sidebar to the bottom right.  You can also follow both my Twitter (@NICU_Musings) and Facebook feeds for additional content and discussion by clicking the additional links found there.

My Facebook page serves as a better means of expanding dialogue on a variety of topics and posts

https://www.facebook.com/allthingsneonatal

Please share and like to help expand the circle of knowledge

Entries in this blog

 

Can a chest x-ray predict the future?

If you work in Neonatology then chances are you have ordered or assisted with obtaining many chest x-rays in your time.  If you look at home many chest x-rays some of our patients get, especially the ones who are with us the longest it can be in the hundreds. I am happy to say the tide though is changing as we move more and more to using other imaging modalities such as ultrasound to replace some instances in which we would have ordered a chest x-ray.  This has been covered before on this site a
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Automated control of FiO2; one step closer

It has been over two years since I have written on this subject and it continues to be something that I get excited about whenever a publication comes my way on the topic.  The last time I looked at this topic it was after the publication of a randomized trial comparing in which one arm was provided automated FiO2 adjustments while on ventilatory support and the other by manual change.  Automated adjustments of FiO2. Ready for prime time? In this post I concluded that the technology was promisin
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Maybe we shouldn’t be in such a rush to stop caffeine.

Given that many preterm infants as they near term equivalent age are ready to go home it is common practice to discontinue caffeine sometime between 33-34 weeks PMA.  We do this as we try to time the readiness for discharge in terms of feeding, to the desire to see how infants fare off caffeine.  In general, most units I believe try to send babies home without caffeine so we do our best to judge the right timing in stopping this medication.  After a period of 5-7 days we generally declare the in
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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A Magic Bullet to Reduce Duration of Treatment and Hospital Stays for Newborns With NAS

As someone with an interest in neonatal abstinence (NAS) I am surprised that I missed this study back in May.  Anyone who says they aren’t interested in NAS research must be turning a blind eye to the North American epidemic of patients filling neonatal units or postpartum wards in need of treatment for the same.  News feeds such as CNN have covered this story many times with concerning articles such as this published “Opioid Crisis Fast Facts” even the Trump White House has  officially declared
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Is expired CO2 the key to making sustained inflation a standard in resuscitation?

We can always learn and we can always do better.  At least that is something that I believe in.  In our approach to resuscitating newborns one simple rule is clear.  Fluid must be replaced by air after birth and the way to oxygenate and remove CO2 is to establish a functional residual capacity.  The functional residual capacity is the volume of air left in the lung after a tidal volume of air is expelled in a spontaneously breathing infant and is shown in the figure. Traditionally, to establish
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Is our approach to ventilation really harming babies?

A grenade was thrown this week with the publication of the Australian experience comparing three epochs of 1991-92, 1997 and 2005 in terms of long term respiratory outcomes. The paper was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine; Ventilation in Extremely Preterm Infants and Respiratory Function at 8 Years. This journal alone gives “street cred” to any publication and it didn’t take long for other news agencies to notice such as Med Page Today. The claim of the paper is that t
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Exclusive human milk diets in infants < 1250g as a rescue approach. The Winnipeg Experience

Exclusive human milk (EHM) diets using either mother’s own milk or donor milk plus a human based human milk fortifier have been the subject of many papers over the last few years. Such papers have demonstrated reductions is such outcomes as NEC, length of stay, days of TPN and number of times feedings are held due to feeding intolerance to name just a few outcomes. There is little argument that a diet for a human child composed of human milk makes a great deal of sense. Although we have come to
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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It’s possible! Resuscitation with volume ventilation after delivery.

I know how to bag a baby.  At least I think I do.  Providing PPV with a bag-valve mask is something that you are taught in NRP and is likely one of the first skills you learned in the NICU.  We are told to squeeze the bag at a rate of 40-60 breaths a minute.  According to the Laerdal website, the volume of the preterm silicone bag that we typically use is 240 mL.  Imagine then that you are wanting to ventilate a baby who is 1 kg.  How much should you compress the bag if you wish to delivery 5 mL
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Is this for real?!

I would consider myself fairly open minded when it comes to care in the NICU.  I wouldn’t call myself a maverick or careless but I certainly am open to new techniques or technologies that may offer a better level of care for the babies in our unit.  When it comes to “non-Western” concepts though such as therapeutic touch, chiropractic manipulations of infants and acupuncture (needle or otherwise) I have generally been a skeptic.  I have written about such topics before with the most popular post
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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How reliable are capillary refill and blood pressure in determination of hemodynamic compromise?

When I think back to my early days as a medical student, one of the first lessons on the physical exam involves checking central and peripheral perfusion as part of the cardiac exam.  In the newborn to assess the hemodynamic status I have often taught that while the blood pressure is a nice number to have it is important to remember that it is a number that is the product of two important factors; resistance and flow.  It is possible then that a newborn with a low blood pressure could have good
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Can Video Laryngoscopy Improve Trainee Success in Intubation?

Things aren’t the way they used to be.  When I was training, opportunities abounded for opportunities to intubate infants.  Then we did away with intubating vigourous infants born through meconium and now won’t be electively intubating them at all.  Then you can add in the move towards use of non-invasive respiratory support instead of intubating and giving surfactant and voila…you have the perfect barrier for training residents and others how to intubate.  On top of all of this the competition
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Scrub but don’t cap the hub to reduce infections in the NICU

I had the pleasure of meeting the author of a paper I am about to comment on this week while at the 99 NICU conference in Stockholm.  Dr. Ohlin from Orebro University in Sweden presented very interesting work on their unit’s “scrub the hub” campaign. As he pointed out, many places attempt to reduce coagulase negative staphylococcal infections by introducing central line bundles but seldom is there one thing that is changed in a bundle that allows for a before and after comparison like his team w
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Could a digital stethoscope revolutionize resuscitation of the newborn?

Look around you.  Technology is increasingly becoming pervasive in our everyday lives both at home and at work.  The promise of technology in the home is to make our lives easier.  Automating tasks such as when the lights turn on or what music plays while you eat dinner (all scripted) are offered by several competitors.  In the workplace, technology offers hopes of reducing medical error and thereby enhancing safety and accuracy of patient care.  The electronic health record while being a nuisan
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Is it time to (ESC)ape from Neonatal Abstinence

I don’t envy our nurses who care for babies withdrawing from various opiates and other substances.  These assignments are definitely a challenge and require a great deal of patience and depending on the shrillness of an infant’s cry a good set of earplugs. Nonetheless we do our best with these infants to keep them calm and avoid as much stimulation as we can as we attempt to minimize the excitability of their nervous system. Over 40 years ago the Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence scoring syst
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Should 24 hour Neonatologist In-House Coverage Be The Rule ?

I have often said that if this came to pass as a mandatory requirement that I would make an announcement shortly thereafter that I was moving on to another career.  I think people thought I was kidding but I can put in writing for all to see that I am serious!  The subject has been discussed for some time as I can recall such talks with colleagues both in my current position and in other centres. The gist of the argument for staying in-house is that continuity is improved over that period and ef
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Early Hydrocortisone: Short term gain without long term pain.

Posted on May 7, 2017 by winnineo In our journey as Neonatologists and interdisciplinary teams we are forever seeking to rid or at least reduce the plague of BPD in the patients we care for.  The PREMILOC trial was a double-blind, multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled trial designed to test just that concept by introducing a low dose of hydrocortisone within 24 hours of birth. They   enrolled infants born between 24 – 26+6 weeks of gestation  and assigned them to receive eithe
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Why does ETT epinephrine get such a bad rap?

I think my first training in resuscitation began with the principles outlined in the NRP 3rd edition program.  As we have moved through subsequent editions with the current edition being number 7, I can’t help but think about how many changes have occurred over that time.  One such change has been the approach to using medications as part of a resuscitation.  Gone are such things as calcium gluconate, naloxone and sodium bicarbonate but something that has stood the test of time is epinephrine. 
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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A Leap Forward in the Treatment of HIE?

The human body truly is a wondrous thing.  Molecules made from one organ, tissue or cell can have far reaching effects as the products take their journey throughout the body.   As a medical student I remember well the many lectures on the kidney.  How one organ could control elimination of waste, regulate salt and water metabolism, blood pressure and RBC counts was truly thought provoking.  At the turn of the century (last one and not 1999 – 2000) Medical school was about a year in length and as
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Rethinking how teams hand over. A better way

This post rings in another new video to add to the series on the All Things Neonatal YouTube channel.  I hope that you have gotten something out of the ones posted so far and that this adds something further to your approach to neonatal care. The Golden Hour Revisited In the last post to the video selections the main thrust of the video was on the use of the Golden Hour approach to starting a baby on CPAP.  Having a standardized checklist based approach to providing care to high risk n
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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NEC & Anemia: Is the truth out there?

A debate broke out recently at one of our rounds when someone asked whether a recent case of NEC was possibly related to a transfusion that a baby received.  Much has been written about Transfusion Associated Necrotizing Enterocolitis (TANEC) with the pendulum swinging back and forth between it existing as a real entity or simply being an association that is not causative in the least.  Using one of my favourite sources, a retrospective analysis of the Canadian Neonatal Network database found no
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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A Golden Opportunity For Your NICU Team!

I have written about respectful communication before in Kill them with kindness. The importance of collaborating in a respectful manner cannot be overemphasized, as a calm and well prepared team can handle just about anything thrown their way.  This past week I finally had the opportunity to take the 7th ed NRP instructor course.  What struck me most about the new version of the course was not the approach to the actual resuscitation but the preparation that was emphasized before you ev
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Donor Milk; Falling like DOMINOs?

The rise of donor milk banks and depots in recent years has been a welcome addition to the care of preterm infants.  We have known for many years that “breast is best” and advocate for mother’s own milk whenever possible.  When this is not possible we previously turned to formula but with the availability of pooled pasteurized donor milk many hospitals have focused on expanding the indications for use.  Through personal communications in Canada we are a bit all over the map in terms of indicatio
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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The Rugged Individualist Neonatal Blogger

Rather excited this week as Biomed Central picked up a blog post that I wrote on social media.  The post is found here.  It is based though on a larger version that I have included below and really delves into the impact of social media and how one uses it.  A big thank you to Kristy Wittmeier for all of her help in writing the post. Original Piece I read with great interest the article by Campbell et al entitled Social media use by physicians: a qualitative study of the new fron
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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Healthy at risk infants failing the infant car seat challenge. Cause for concern?

The infant car seat challenge(ICSC) is a test which most definitely fits the definition of a battleground issue in Neonatology.  After publishing the Canadian Pediatric Practice point on the same topic I received interesting feedback through the various social media forums that I frequent.  While some were celebrating the consensus of the statement as verification that a centres’ non practice of the test was acceptable, others seriously questioned the validity of the position.  The naysayers wou
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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The New BPD That Matters

As a Neonatologist I doubt there are many topics discussed over coffee more than BPD.  It is our metric by which we tend to judge our performance as a team and centre possibly more than any other.  This shouldn't be that surprising.  The dawn of Neonatology was exemplified by the development of ventilators capable of allowing those with RDS to have a chance at survival.  As John F Kennedy discovered when his son Patrick was born at 34 weeks, without such technology available there just wasn't mu
AllThingsNeonatal

AllThingsNeonatal

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