Supported by Pennsylvania Hospital Kernicterus Fund and the Eglin Fund In the late 1980s, the question whether bilirubin damaged the brain of healthy infants was unanswered. The absence of documented evidence influenced the formulation of the 1994 consensus-based guidelines...

Point-of-care testing (POCT) results, like other forms of laboratory data, hold potential hidden information that can be utilized to improve patient care.  The technique of extracting useful information from vast amounts of data is termed “data mining”. Technological solutions are now available to meet the challenges ...

Simple data-mining algorithms can be applied to point-of-care testing (POCT) data to document compliance of quality control, operator training and to identify potential preanalytical errors. Data can be manipulated to automate manual review and other laborious processes for identifying data trends, verifying...

Neonatology, perhaps more than any other field in medicine, has undergone dramatic improvements in care over the last several decades. One of the main areas of advancement is the ability to mechanically ventilate premature infants with a variety of neonatal lung conditions. As survival of premature infants has...

Almost as soon as healthcare providers began ventilating neonates with respiratory distress syndrome, the problem of chronic lung disease began. How to manage these children in a way to promote lung growth and disease-free survival has been the question for those involved in the care of these infants since that time....

Optimizing all the steps in the testing cycle is as crucial to the success of point-of-care testing (POCT) as the measurement process itself. The complete POCT process or testing cycle is a complex series of events that involve many parties in any organization.  Consultation with all the people concerned is vital and ...

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is one of the most rapidly growing areas within laboratory medicine. The need for POCT has developed because in many cases the central laboratory has been unable to meet the expectations of clinical users, particularly with respect to turnaround time. It is widely recognized that...

Arterial blood gas analysis with the measurement of the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in arterial blood may be performed in the Pediatric ICU to evaluate the efficacy of ventilation or evaluate acid-base status. Although the direct measurement of PaCO₂ remains the gold standard, it provides only a single...

Numerous method comparison studies of blood gas analyzer methods have been published in the literature; unfortunately, several studies show flaws in one or several aspects of experimental design, execution, statistical analysis or interpretation of results. The most common flaw seems to be an inability to separate...

Fluid and electrolyte management is an important and challenging part of the management of any very premature or critically ill newborn. The newborn's ability to maintain fluid and electrolyte homeostasis in the face of the vagaries of extrauterine life is compromised by immature renal function. The very premature...