Published online May 1, 2008
PEDIATRICS Vol. 121 No. 5 May 2008, pp. 1048-1049 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-0558)
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow P3Rs: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when P3Rs are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow E-mail this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My File Cabinet
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Hey, E.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Hey, E.
Related Collections
Right arrow Therapeutics & Toxicology

COMMENTARY

Making Life Safe for Canaries

Edmund Hey, DM

Retired Pediatrician, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Key Words: HDN, hemorrhagic disease of the newborn

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

I can still remember the words written in red ink at the bottom of my essay: "You had a promising idea, but its development was disappointing." Many think that we already know all we really need to know about the use of vitamin K, but I fear my old headmaster might have viewed things rather more critically.

The speed with which people realized how vitamin K could be used to almost eliminate the risk of hemorrhagic disease of the newborn (HDN) was impressive. Indeed, the first article to describe clinical use appeared only 4 years after Danish biochemist Henrik Dam1 described his discovery in Nature in 1935. Use spread rapidly in Europe and America once a commercial product became available in the late 1940s, and when a single dose did not suffice to stop not just classic HDN but also intraventricular hemorrhage in the preterm infant, people started administering bigger doses. It did not take long after that for reports to appear that linked the use of the water-soluble analog menadione (the only preparation then commercially available) with an epidemic of severe . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Address correspondence to Edmund Hey, DM E-mail: shey@easynet.co.uk