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YVONNE E. VAUCHER, MD
Medical Director, ISCC Follow-up UCSD 225 Dickinson St San Diego, CA 92103-1990

Am J Dis Child. 1989;143(7):763.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—We appreciate Dr Langkamp's concern that the widespread use of surfactant-replacement therapy among very-low-birth-weight infants with surfactant deficiency might result in an exchange of increased neurodevelopmental morbidity for decreased mortality caused by respiratory distress syndrome. Although a larger patient population would be ideal to exclude a type II error conclusively, our follow-up data, based on a randomized, controlled trial of human surfactant replacement, did not indicate substantial differences in major neurologic or developmental sequelae, such as cerebral palsy or severe mental retardation, between surfactant recipients and placebo-treated infants receiving conventional ventilation. We cannot yet exclude differences between the two groups in later sequelae, such as communication disorder, attention-deficit disorder, perceptual-motor abnormalities, or learning disability. While a 100% follow-up rate is desirable, this is difficult to accomplish in most regions of the United States given family mobility, high frequency of low socioeconomic status, and the lack of universal access to health . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
We note that in our Table footnote, a decimal point was missing; the SEM should have read 1.5 months, not 15 months.

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