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Is epinephrine effective during neonatal resuscitation?

Pediatric Research volume 93, pages 466–468 (2023)Cite this article

Epinephrine (adrenaline) is the only medication recommended by the International Liaison Committee On Resuscitation (ILCOR) during resuscitation in newborns with persistent bradycardia or asystole.1 However, there are no randomized clinical trials investigating epinephrine use in the delivery room owing to its infrequent use during resuscitation (~0.05–0.06% of live births),2 difficulty in predicting its need and ethical challenges. Retrospective studies and large multicenter observational studies and registries are providing valuable clinical data on survival and long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes.

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Fig. 1: Animal models for neonatal resuscitation.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) 5 R01 HD072929 09 (S.L.), and research grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics-Neonatal Resuscitation Program (D.S.), and Children’s Miracle Network at UC Davis Pediatrics (D.S.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA

    Deepika Sankaran & Satyan Lakshminrusimha

  2. Adventist Health and Rideout Hospital, Marysville, CA, USA

    Deepika Sankaran

  3. Discipline of Paediatrics, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Trinity Research in Childhood Centre (TRICC) and Trinity Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Eleanor J. Molloy

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  1. Deepika Sankaran
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  2. Eleanor J. Molloy
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  3. Satyan Lakshminrusimha
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Contributions

D.S. and S.L. made substantial contributions to the conception and design, data acquisition, and interpretation of data and drafting the manuscript. E.J.M. made substantial contributions to the concept, design, editing and revising the manuscript. All authors critically revised and approved the final version for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Deepika Sankaran.

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Competing interests

The named authors have no conflict of interest, financial or otherwise. S.L. is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Neonatal Resuscitation Steering Committee (NRP). Views expressed in this manuscript are those of authors and do not reflect the official position of AAP/NRP.

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Sankaran, D., Molloy, E.J. & Lakshminrusimha, S. Is epinephrine effective during neonatal resuscitation?. Pediatr Res 93, 466–468 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-022-02411-2

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