Diagnostic Yield of Newborn Screening for Biliary Atresia Using Direct or Conjugated Bilirubin Measurements.

Importance: Treating biliary atresia in newborns earlier can delay or prevent the need for liver transplant; however, treatment typically occurs later because biliary atresia is difficult to detect during its early stages.

Objective: To determine the diagnostic yield of newborn screening for biliary atresia with direct or conjugated bilirubin measurements and to evaluate the association of screening implementation with clinical outcomes.

Design, Setting, And Participants: A cross-sectional screening study of 124 385 infants born at 14 Texas hospitals between January 2015 and June 2018; and a pre-post study of 43 infants who underwent the Kasai portoenterostomy as treatment for biliary atresia at the region's largest pediatric hepatology center before (January 2008-June 2011) or after (January 2015-June 2018) screening implementation.

Pre mortem analysis of lung injury and lung function in oxygen toxic rabbits.

Objectives: To determine whether respiratory system mechanics measurements could detect lung injury in oxygen toxic rabbits before clinical deterioration. To determine whether respiratory system mechanics measurements, using a power analysis, have the statistical power to detect significant reductions in hyperoxic lung injury due to an intervention when compared with traditional post mortem measurements of lung injury, extravascular lung water, and bronchoalveolar lavage protein concentration.

Design: Prospective, controlled study.

Current issues in Texas neonatology.

Since almost 10% of the births in the United States occur in Texas, issues that affect neonatal care in Texas are important for both the state and the nation. Although overall statistics are similar for the state and nation, closer examination reveals a need for improvement in specific areas, namely prenatal care, black and Hispanic mortality, and low birth-weight rates. Lay midwifery regulation has been an important concern in Texas.

A nonlinear regression analysis of nonlinear, passive-deflation flow-volume plots.

When studying lung mechanics of intubated premature infants, by the passive-deflation technique we noted that in many flow-volume plots the descending limb was curvilinear with a convexity toward the volume axis. By conventional linear analysis lung mechanics of these patients did not change after the administration of terbutaline, but Mead's tangent-chord slope ratio method for quantifying the amount of curvature showed that the shape of the flow-volume plots did change. Because of the limitations of this method, we developed a microcomputer-based, reiterative regression algorithm which optimizes a nonlinear function for the best fit to any given set of data.

Passive deflation time constant of 7-week-old rabbits.

The purpose of our study was to determine the effects of insufflation time (TI) and of tidal volume (VT) on the passive deflation time constant (tau) of juvenile rabbits. We sedated and paralyzed nine 7-wk-old New Zealand rabbits (wt 1.2 +/- 0.