AUTOMATED BLOOD ANALYSIS: SUCCESS OR EXCESS?
Charles D. Cook M.D.1
1 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06510
As the abnormalities and complications of prematurity and especially the idiopathic respiratory distress syndrome have become better understood, it has become appropriate to treat any potentially viable infant much more aggressively than 20 or even 10 years ago. Once it was believed that an incubator served, among other things, as a barrier to protect a premature infant from the meddling and disturbing manipulations of physicians; now we have warming devices without walls so that the infants are more accessible and the physical barriers are minimized.
Much of the increased knowledge about normal and abnormal neonatal adjustments has been based on physiologic and/or biochemical investigations and these, in turn, have been possible because of the development of microtechniques, especially those for the determination of serum electrolytes, blood gases, and pH.
