Painless blood testing to prevent neonatal sepsis.

The current US guidelines advise that all women colonized with Group B streptococcus (GBS) at 35-37 weeks, as well as those laboring before this time and all women with GBS urinary tract infections, should be offered intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis, usually in the form of high-dose intravenous penicillin or ampicillin, unless delivered by planned cesarean section before the onset of labor in a woman with intact membranes. In term and preterm babies who are born to treated women, in addition to babies who act ill, the recommendation is to treat the baby with antibiotics. In certain circumstances, such as when the mother receives an intrapartum antibiotic < 4 hours prior to delivery, the baby receives antibiotics even if the baby appears well.

Of lobsters, electronic medical records, and neonatal total parenteral nutrition.

At the Mayo Health System in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, there are >1000 infant total parenteral nutrition (TPN) orders placed per year. It is the most complicated order that the pharmacy fills, so a recent peer-review article in Pediatrics moved a group of us to action at our center to buy or develop a TPN calculator. We did this because no stand-alone commercial calculators were available to us, and expensive electronic medical records typically do not include TPN calculators for neonatal patients.

Vitamin K prophylaxis for premature infants: 1 mg versus 0.5 mg.

We studied babies (22 to 32 weeks gestational age) of mothers wishing to breast-feed. Group 1 received 1 mg of vitamin K and Group 2 received 0.5 mg of vitamin K.