Prophylactic ethamsylate for periventricular haemorrhage.

Drs Cooke and Morgan have shown in a double blind trial that ethamsylate seemed to reduce the incidence of periventricular haemorrhage.' Although this is of great interest, no confirmation of these results is available so far. Yet Delandale Laboratories are already advertising ethamsylate as the drug to prevent periventricular haemorrhage in the newborn infant. In the past similar effects, claimed for phenobarbitone, were not subsequently substantiated.2 3 In this journal, the same authors4 tried to analyse the neurodevelopmental outcome in relation to treatment with ethamsylate. The cases studied were collected in three parts over a two year period-the first part included infants in a randomised trial, the second infants not treated with the drug, and the third all infants treated with ethamsylate. Two objections can be raised to any conclusions drawn from their analyses: