This week, as I mentioned before, I spent mainly in the neonatal ICU. Most of the babies were admitted because they were premature and/or having respiratory issues, but there were some more serious cases. The most serious case is a baby that was born with only one lung. Dr. Frayer had told us about this particular baby before in our weekly meetings. He has never seen a baby with only one lung because traditionally this defect is lethal in utero. But this week, the baby was also suffering from acute renal failure. For the entire week, the baby's creatinine level (a measure of renal function) was trending up. Finally, on Thursday evening they began to give the baby lasix and the creatinine level plateaued. If the renal function didn't improve, the baby was going to have to be put on dialysis. It was believed that the renal decline was due to drug toxicity.
I think the most interesting part of working in the NICU was that when I think of babies and their problems, I would think that there are different ways to approach them for the baby rather than an adult patient, but for the most part that isn't true. The doses and such are just much smaller.
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