Are any of you who are currently working in neonatal intensive care units doing any news breaking treatments? For example, ten years ago when I was working, the neonatologists were participating in an ambitious pilot study which involved inserting a test drug into the endotracheal tubes of certain premature babies to help prevent hyaline membrane disease. Would love to read any comments about new happenings in NICU's. Thanks!

I'm going to move this to the NICU forum where it won't be overlooked.

You might be interesting in reading this newsletter and those in the archives to catch up.

http://www.hopkinscme.edu/ofp/eNeonatalReview/

Right now one of the hot topics is "with or without oxygen" or how much during resususitation.

Do you mean things like whole body/head cooling for HIE babies? Neonatal organ transplantation? One-lung ventilation? The EXIT procedure?

We have been doing ABO incompatible heart transplants on infants under 1 year old for almost 3 years now. Most of them have been very successful. The immunosuppressive regime for these transplants is fairly complex but seems to be the combination to beat. We use rabbit-derived antithymocyte globulin and daclizimab along with the usual tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetil and methylprednisolone. So far we haven't seen any rejections after this regime.

We have also listed a number of fetuses with prenatal diagnoses of severe, complex cardiac anomalies and five years ago this Saturday one of these babies was delivered at our hospital (we haven't had an OB unit for more than a decade!), carried across the hall and given a heart. It was amazing and he's doing really well. I spent his first Christmas with him!