Teamwork and Adherence to Guideline on Newborn Resuscitation-Video Review of Neonatal Interdisciplinary Teams

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the importance of non-technical skills for the adherence to guidelines, when teams of midwives, obstetricians, anesthesiologists, and pediatricians resuscitate and support the transition of newborns. Non-technical skills are competences underpinning successful teamwork in healthcare. These are usually referred to as leadership, situational awareness, communication, teamwork, decision making, and coping with stress and fatigue. OBJECTIVE: By review of videos of teams managing newborns with difficult transition, we aimed to investigate whether the level of the teams' non-technical skills was associated with the degree of adherence to guidelines for newborn resuscitation and transitional support at birth. METHODS: Four expert raters independently assessed 43 real-life videos of teams managing newborns with transitional difficulties, two assessed the non-technical score and two assessed the clinical performance. Exposure was the non-technical score, obtained by the Global Assessment Of Team Performance checklist (GAOTP). GAOTP was rated on a Likert Scale 1–5 (1 = poor, 3 = average and 5 = excellent). The outcome was the clinical performance score of the team assessed according to adherence of the European Resuscitation Counsel (ERC) guideline for neonatal resuscitation and transitional support. The ERC guideline was adapted into the checklist TeamOBS-Newborn to facilitate a structured and simple performance assessment (low score 0–60, average 60–84, high 85–100). Interrater agreement was analyzed by intraclass correlation (ICC), Bland-Altman analysis, and Cohen's kappa weighted. The risk of high and low clinical performance was analyzed on the logit scale to meet the assumptions of normality and constant standard deviation. RESULTS: Teams with an excellent non-technical score had a relative risk 5.5 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.4–22.5] of high clinical performance score compared to teams with average non-technical score. In addition, we found a dose response like association. The specific non-technical skills associated with the highest degree of adherence to guidelines were leadership and teamwork, coping with stress and fatigue, and communication with parents. Inter-rater agreement was high; raters assessing non-technical skills had an interclass coefficient (ICC) 0.88 (95% CI 0.79–0.94); the neonatologists assessing clinical performance had an ICC of 0.81 (95% CI 0.66–0.89). CONCLUSION: Teams with an excellent non-technical score had five times the chance of high clinical performance compared to teams with average non-technical skills. High performance teams were characterized by good leadership and teamwork, coping with stress, and fatigue and communication with parents

N-acetylcysteine does not prevent bronchopulmonary dysplasia in immature infants: a randomized controlled trial

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether N-acetylcysteine (NAC) infusion during the first week of life reduces the risk of death or bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) in infants with extremely low birth weight.Study design In a Nordic multicenter, double-blind trial, infants (n=391) weighing 500 to 999 g and on ventilator or nasal continuous positive airway pressure were randomized before the age of 36 hours to receive NAC 16 to 32 mg/kg/d (n=194) or placebo (n=197) intravenously for 6 days. Primary end points were death or BPD, defined as supplementary oxygen requirement at 36 weeks' gestational age. RESULTS: There was no difference in the combined incidence of the primary end points death or BPD, 51% vs. 49%, between the NAC group and control group. Also similar was the incidence of BPD in survivors at 36 weeks' gestational age, 40% vs. 40%, and the mean oxygen requirement at the age of 28 days, 31.2% vs. 30.7%, respectively. The severity of BPD was similar in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: A 6-day course of intravenous N-acetylcysteine at the dosage used does not prevent BPD or death in infants with extremely low birth weight

Early Surfactant Guided by Lamellar Body Counts on Gastric Aspirate in Very Preterm Infants

Background: We have developed a rapid method, based on lamellar body counts (LBC) on gastric aspirate, for identifying newborns who will develop respiratory distress syndrome with a need for surfactant supplementation. Objective: We set out to test whether it was possible to improve the outcome when used in a clinical trial. Methods: We randomly assigned 380 infants born at 24-29 weeks' gestation and supported with nasal continuous positive airway pressure (nCPAP) to receive surfactant guided either by LBC (intervention group) or increasing need for oxygen (control group). The primary outcome was mechanical ventilation or death within 5 days. Secondary outcomes included need for oxygen expressed by arterial to alveolar oxygen tension ratio (a/APO(2)) at the age of 6 h and need for oxygen at day 28. Results: The primary outcomes were equal (25%) in the two groups. The intervention group had higher a/APO(2) than the control group at 6 h, median 0.64 versus 0.52 (p < 0.01), and the subgroup with gestational age 26-29 weeks needed fewer days of oxygen supplementation than the controls, median 2 vs. 9 days (p = 0.01), and fewer infants needed oxygen at day 28 (p = 0.04). Furthermore, there was a tendency in the intervention group towards a shorter duration of nCPAP. Too little or viscose aspirate in 23% of the cases was a limitation of the method. Conclusion: Using LBC test as indicator of lung maturity and early surfactant therapy in very preterm newborns, it is possible to reduce the need for oxygen supplementation. Copyright (C) 2013 S. Karger AG, Base