Newborn babies admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) often require many supportive invasive devices and frequently receive antimicrobial therapy. We investigated the microbial flora in NICU patients reporting the distribution of infections in different catheter sites. Results showed that 97% of samples were positive; in particular 11% were positive for two or more microbial agen...

This article presents the elements of the Observation and Assessment section of the Infant Care Path for Physical Therapy in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The types of physical therapy assessments presented in this path are evidence-based and the suggested timing of these assessments is primarily based on practice knowledge from expert therapists, with supporting evidence cited. Asse...

The objective of this study was to determine drug use in newborns at an inborn tertiary care neonatal intensive care unit, serving a predominantly African American population, to identify educational/research priorities in neonatal drug therapy. Data on demographics and exposure rates to all drugs from 6839 neonates born between January 1997 and June 2004 were analyzed. Number of drugs used was...

The current study examined memory and executive functioning in a sample of children who were hospital ized in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after birth. Thirty-two children born prematurely and/or with medical complications (NICU children) and 25 control children born at term were assessed with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery (CANTAB), a multi-dimensional comp...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to develop and pretest a questionnaire to assess the practice of withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment in the NICU on the basis of the experiences of bereaved parents. METHODS We conducted semistructured interviews with 11 parents whose infants had undergone withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment in the NICU at McMaster University Medical Centre t...

BACKGROUND Maternal antenatal transfers provide better neonatal outcomes. However, there will inevitably be some infants who require acute transport to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Because of this, many institutions develop services to provide neonatal transport by specially trained health personnel. However, few studies report on relevant clinical outcomes in infants requiring transp...

Title:Polymicrobial bloodstream infections in the neonatal intensive care unit are associated with increased mortality: A case-control study

OBJECTIVE To explore parents' perceptions of treatment withdrawal and the dying process. DESIGN Face to face interviews with 59 sets of parents of 62 babies in the East of Scotland three months and 13 months after death. RESULTS 22% of the parents expressed reservations about the length of the dying process, which they reported in these instances had taken from three to 36 hours. Deaths tha...

Acinetobacter soli is a new bacterial species described from forest soil. Five cases of bloodstream infection caused by A. soli clonal isolates are reported here for the first time. The patients were neonates admitted to an intensive care unit. This is a new neonatal pathogen with the potential to cause outbreaks.