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  • Letter to the Editor
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An assumption of disease continuity

Journal of Perinatology volume 26, page 720 (2006)Cite this article

I read Dr Sharma et al.'s paper (J Perinatol 26: 342–347; doi: 10.1038) and found it to be very interesting and in general a nice and detailed study of the variance in acquired neonatal bowel disease presentations across gestation ages. However, I have three points to raise about their analysis and conclusions.

First, in Figure 1, an r-value of 0.122 is not a particularly satisfying fit and I suspect the problem there is that the relationship is not truly linear. It is not unusual to get significance when one plots a linear fit to what is actually a skewed hyperbolic function with the dominant tail being aligned with the linear regression. However, more than that, they had 48 infants in the 23–26 weeks category in Table 3, but only five of them are apparent in Figure 1. This is a substantial amount of drop out for something that is generally easy to extract from the record. I suspect that the majority of infants in the EP category perforated in the first 2 weeks of life, but I will come back to this point.

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References

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  1. Departments of Pediatrics and Neonatology, University of Virginia Children's Hospital, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    P V Gordon

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  1. P V Gordon
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Correspondence to P V Gordon.

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Gordon, P. An assumption of disease continuity. J Perinatol 26, 720 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jp.7211595

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