Medical Mythbusting (?) - NEC and transfusions

[Stefan Johansson]

In case you have not yet read the blog post below by Michael Narvey, do it!

In my twitter feed I just read about the very recent meta-analysis of transfusion-associated NEC

From the original paper:

Quote

In short, the concept of "TANEC" seems just so poorly researched, as The average rating for the quality of evidence of individual studies was between "very low" and "low."

In short, confounding by indication is the likely conceptual mistake here.

Here's the pubmed URL to the paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27866662 

 

 

[Bernhard Bungert]

There's a Lot of calculating so Long. I started with an article about possible pathophysiology. Interesting. http://neoreviews.aappublications.org/content/16/7/e420. After Reading that there are a Lot of pointe for a debate.

[Stefan Johansson]

I agree, if you also read the blog post by @AllThingsNeonatal above, I believe that the topic still interesting. After all, NEC is such a multifactorial disease.

[bimalc]

My interpretation of the GRADE review is to ignore the pooled estimates for the observational studies for sure because of the poor quality.  The issue is, as Stefan highlights, confounding by indication.  The available RCT data do not support transfusion as increasing risk of NEC.  I think the most elegant study to try and better understand what is going on and by-pass the confounding by indication study is the JAMA https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=26934258 where they are able to parse out anemia from transfusion.  I am still only a fellow, but I base my transfusion practice vis a vis NEC risk on the RCT data from the GRADE review and this paper highlighting the anemia as the key feature. This conclusion is consistent with the finding in the RCTs of less NEC in the liberal transfusion group because the liberal transfusion group would presumably have less (and likely less severe) anemia.