1 The William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia,Pa.
In a recent Commentary on the reliability of bilirubin determinations in sera of newborn infants, Mather has correctly pointed out that the use of the diazo method has serious shortcomings, mainly because of the significant error introduced by hemolysis of even slight degree. Fortunately, spectrophotometric measurement of concentrations of bilirubin in serum is not only more accurate but simpler, and in the sera of newborn has the required specificity for bilirubin because of the low concentrations of lipochrome pigments during the early weeks of life.