TY - JOUR T1 - Highlights from this issue JF - Archives of Disease in Childhood - Fetal and Neonatal Edition JO - Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed SP - 1 LP - 1 DO - 10.1136/archdischild-2015-310173 VL - 101 IS - 1 AU - Martin Ward Platt Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://fn.bmj.com/content/101/1/1.abstract N2 - Or there again, how far should an umbilical catheter be inserted to land on the sweet point in the vein or artery respectively? The system based on linear measurements which remains in common use was published by Peter Dunn 50 years ago; it was derived from post-mortem studies so it had high face validity, but was never to my knowledge subjected to a rigorous comparison with any other method. Filling this gap in knowledge, Kieran et al have done a randomised comparison of the linear measurement method against a formula based on birth weight: they found that using weight did not improve the accuracy of placing umbilical venous catheters, compared to linear measurement, but was significantly better with respect to arterial catheters. This is a really useful, practical result which could be incorporated in guidance in every neonatal service and would be a neat piece of quality improvement. See page F10Over thirty years ago, my first introduction to continuous positive airway pressure support was ‘bubble CPAP’: a crude but effective and very cheap means of delivering CPAP, in which … ER -