Send us Fan Mail The American Board of Pediatrics has reversed course. After months of pushback from the neonatology community, the ABP has excluded neonatal-perinatal medicine from the two year fellowship waivers it is now granting to seven other pediatric subspecialties. Neonatology fellowship stays at three years. Ben is joined by Dr. Patrick Myers, past chair of ONTPD and fellowship director at Northwestern, and Dr. Brooke Vergales, ONTPD co-chair, to break down how this happened. They de...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Incubator Podcast, Ben and Daphna dig into four studies testing what the evidence supports at the bedside. They open with the 24-month BeNeDuctus follow-up, where expectant management and early ibuprofen for PDA yield identical survival without neurodevelopmental impairment. Daphna then presents the Nourish trial, finding individually targeted milk fortification did not improve growth, body composition, or brain MRI outcomes. Next, a Dutch study links probiot...

Send us Fan Mail Does Tylenol in pregnancy cause autism or ADHD? In this edition of Neo News, Ben and Eli break down a major JAMA Internal Medicine study from Hong Kong that followed hundreds of thousands of mother-child pairs and used a sibling-matched design to answer the question. The verdict: no association between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, regardless of timing, pattern, or dose. But data alone doesn't win hearts. The conversation turns to the b...

Send us Fan Mail In this Journal Club episode, Daphna reviews the first national estimate of potential neonatal organ donors, a Pediatrics cohort study from 23 Australian NICUs, along with its companion commentary. Of 1,760 infants who died in the NICU between 2012 and 2022 at 35 weeks corrected age or later, about one in three met conservative eligibility criteria. Most would have donated after circulatory death, and a smaller group with severe HIE could potentially have donated after neurol...

Send us Fan Mail In this Journal Club episode, Ben reviews a JAMA Network Open study from two Dutch Level IV NICUs. It examined NEC before and after routine implementation of a three-strain probiotic in 1,413 infants born before 30 weeks or under 1,000 grams. NEC fell from 11.9% to 5.3%, and late-onset sepsis also declined. But non-NEC mortality rose after implementation. NEC also dropped in an unexposed reference cohort, and one infant died of B. infantis sepsis. Ben and Daphna discuss how b...

Send us Fan Mail In this Journal Club episode, Daphna presents a JAMA Pediatrics randomized trial led by Mandy Belfort and Terrie Inder. It tested whether point-of-care human milk analysis, used to individually target protein and fat fortification, improves outcomes in infants born at 24 to 30 weeks. Milk was analyzed every weekday with the Miris analyzer. Fortification in the intervention group was adjusted to meet protein and energy targets. Growth, body composition by air displacement plet...

Send us Fan Mail In this Journal Club episode, Ben and Daphna review the 24-month follow-up of the BeNeDuctus trial, which compared expectant management with early ibuprofen for PDA in infants born before 28 weeks. Survival without neurodevelopmental impairment was identical in both groups, at 49%. Ben places the findings alongside Baby-OSCAR, the PDA trial, TRIOCAPI, and SMART-PDA, and explains why a neutral result does not mean no PDA should ever be treated. The conversation then turns to h...

Send us Fan Mail Feeding in the NICU is rarely one person's job, yet the language around it changes from nurse to therapist to physician to parent. In this Tech Tuesday episode, Ben and Daphna sit down with Lisa Kleinz and Erin Lesage of Dr. Brown's Medical to unpack feeding together, a philosophy built on team approach, family at the center, and feeding that begins on day one rather than at first bottle. They discuss what separates cue-based feeding from a truly standardized Infant-Driven Fe...

Send us Fan Mail Ben sits down with Dr. Shetal Shah and AAP federal advocacy director Stephanie Glier to unpack HR1, the sweeping reconciliation bill that could cut $1.15 trillion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade. With 40% of US births and up to 65% of NICU graduates covered by Medicaid, the stakes for neonatology are enormous. Shetal and Stephanie break down state directed payments, provider taxes, shortened retroactive coverage windows, and new work requirements, explaining...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Incubator Podcast, Ben and Daphna dig into four studies reshaping bedside decisions. They open questioning whether routine DAT screening for ABO and RhD incompatibility still earns its place, finding transcutaneous bilirubin alone predicts phototherapy need just as well. Next, a Swedish national registry of over two million births links missed intramuscular vitamin K, and rising oral substitution, to a near-doubling of bleeding and intracranial hemorrhage ris...