BMJ 1996;313:1147 (2 November)

Letters

Paediatricians should return to policies of parenteral prophylaxis

EDITOR,--Rudiger von Kries and colleagues1 and Pat Ansell and colleagues2 provide further evidence against a relation between the administration of parenteral vitamin K in the neonatal period and cancer in later childhood, this relation having been reported by Golding et al in 1992.3 As the efficacy of oral prophylaxis has not been definitely shown, intramuscular vitamin K seems to be the best treatment for preventing haemorrhagic disease of the newborn.

According to Barton et al, in 1993 almost three fifths of babies born in the United Kingdom received oral vitamin K without there being any consensus about dose or frequency of administration4; thus infants were exposed to an increased risk of haemorrhage.5 This shift towards a policy of oral prophylaxis can be observed worldwide.

Late onset bleeding is potentially life threatening but preventable and rare, and doubts concerning the safety and efficacy of oral vitamin K remain. Now that . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Vitamin K and childhood cancer: a population based case-control study in Lower Saxony, Germany
Rudiger von Kries, Ulrich Gobel, Alexandra Hachmeister, Uwe Kaletsch, and Jorg Michaelis
BMJ 1996 313: 199-203. [Abstract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ