This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Arne Ohisson, MD, MSc
Women's College Hospital Toronto, Ontario

JAMA. 1995;273(20):1576.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The study by Dr Als and colleagues¹ of the effectiveness of a newborn individualized developmental care and assessment program (NIDCAP) to reduce very low-birth-weight infant morbidity has been published with an accompanying enthusiastic Editorial.²

The philosophy behind NIDCAP is attractive and is centered around stress reduction, promotion of infant development, and opportunities for parenting. Unfortunately, as in two previous studies,^3,4 the present report leaves the critical reader uncertain with regard to the effectiveness of NIDCAP.

It is remarkable that antenatal corticosteroids to prevent neonatal morbidity were given to only 10% of the mothers. Given the size of the authors' unit, it is surprising that it took 21 months to enroll 43 neonates. Randomization occurred within 3 hours after admission to the NICU, but two additional eligibility criteria had to be met by 48 hours' postnatal age. Therefore, one would expect that at least some . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?