PEDIATRICS Vol. 85 No. 3 March 1990, pp. 365-366
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Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Trials

CURTIS L. MEINERT PHD1

1 Department of Epidemiology, School of Hygiene and Public Health, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

The randomized trial reported by O'Rourke and coworkers1 (they call it a randomized study but why not call it what it is?) provides insight into the dilemma faced when trying to evaluate a therapy believed, rightly or wrongly, to be efficacious. The fact that extracorporeal membrane oxygenation therapy for persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn was introduced in 1976 but not tested in a trial until years later, and then only after it was already viewed in many quarters as effective, is a sad comment on how therapies are introduced and accepted into the armamentarium of treatments.2,3