Ethamsylate for the prevention of morbidity and mortality in preterm or very low birth weight infants.

Background: Ethamsylate decreases blood loss in certain clinical situations such as menorrhagia and following some surgical procedures. This potential to reduce bleeding has led to the hypothesis that it may have a role to play in reducing intraventricular haemorrhage in preterm infants.

Objectives: To determine if ethamsylate, when compared to placebo or no treatment, reduces morbidity and/or mortality in preterm infants.

Sudden oronasal bleeding in a young child.

Unlabelled: Sudden severe upper-airway obstruction occurring in a hospital setting can sometimes precipitate an episode of acute haemorrhagic pulmonary oedema. A review of 197 published case reports shows that the presenting feature is almost always the sudden appearance of blood stained fluid coming up through the larynx or out through the mouth and nose of an adult or child in obvious respiratory distress. Such overt features are seen in 10-15% of cases of sudden severe, but sub-lethal, upper-airway obstruction.

Evaluation of the Ages and Stages Questionnaires in identifying children with neurosensory disability in the Magpie Trial follow-up study.

Aim: To evaluate performance of the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (full ASQ), and a shortened version (short ASQ), in detecting children with severe neurosensory disability in the Magpie Trial follow-up study.

Methods: All children, born to women in the Magpie Trial and selected for follow-up, with a completed full 30 items and/or short 9-items ASQ were included in this analysis. Sensitivity and specificity, corrected for verification bias, were computed to assess detection ability.

Coffee and pregnancy.

A moderate reduction in caffeine intake in the second half of pregnancy has no effect on birth weight or length of gestation

Hyperglycaemia and the very preterm baby.

Neonatal hyperglycaemia, as usually defined (a whole blood glucose of >7 mmol/L), is common in the first week of life in babies born more than 12 weeks early. However, a review of a cohort of all such births in the north of England suggests that significant glycosuria is uncommon, and that there is no threat of an osmotic diuresis until the urine contains 2% glucose (by which time the blood glucose level almost always exceeds 15 mmol/L). The current statistical or epidemiological definition of hyperglycaemia (derived from data on term babies) needs to be replaced, for clinical purposes, by a more operationally relevant definition.