I am pleased to present the proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference on Evidence vs Experience in Neonatal Practices, which was held in Chicago in June 2008. Since its inception, this conference has grown each year with over 300 attendees participating last year. As the theme of the conference implies, the speakers provided evidence-based discussions focused on clinical practice of neonatal medicine. Where evidence was lacking, these experts discussed their ‘experience’ with the audience. This, in most part, was facilitated by the audience response system (ARS), which gave instant feedback to critical questions on each topic in real time.
The unique aspect of this year's conference was the inclusion of two hot topics in neonatal medicine: The use of probiotics and prebiotics in preventing necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and functional echocardiography at the bedside. A number of papers have been published involving the feeding of probiotics and prebiotics to infants examining a wide range of health outcomes including safety, prophylaxis and alleviation of diarrheal disease, reduction in atopic disease, reduction in NEC and infection. As new safety and efficacy data emerge, probiotic- and prebiotic- containing infant formulas are expected to grow. The fifth annual conference started with an excellent discussion by Michael Caplan from Northwestern University, Chicago on the use of probiotic and prebiotic supplementation to prevent NEC.
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