1 Departments of Pathology and Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Pediatricians caring for the newborn are particularly aware of unexpected deleterious outcomes of well-intentioned therapy. Oxygen, chloramphenicol, sulfadiazine, and continuous positive airway pressure are examples. Elsewhere in this issue Pape et al.1 suggest that intermittent positive-pressure ventilation provided by a tight-fitting face mask in low-birthweight infants is yet another example. They observed a 30% incidence of significant intracerebellar hemorrhages in infants so treated (groups A and D). Such hemorrhages were seen in 10% of babies who were ventilated by an endotracheal tube rather than by mask (groups B and C), and were not seen in their 13 nonventilated babies (group E).