1 Clinical Scholars Program, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510
To the Editor.
Osterag et al (Pediatrics 1986;77:275-280) report that early feeding of sick very low birth weight infants does not increase the incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis. However, the authors failed to address the high likelihood of a false-negative result due to the small sample sizes.
With only 17 neonates in each group, the power of the study to detect an increase in the incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis from .35 to .55 is only 33%. In other words, there is a 67% chance that an increase of this size was missed.