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BACKGROUND: The main goal of neonatologist performed echocardiography is to timely assess hemodynamic changes in order to properly manage unsteady neonates. Detailed structural heart assessment remains the domain of pediatric cardiologists. Nonetheless, many neonatologists take on an additional role in diagnosis of congenital heart defects, mostly compelled by the lack of in-house pediatric cardiology services. The experience of neonatologist performed echocardiography in an Italian neonatal unit was reported and the risk benefit profile of this practice was discussed. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the echocardiograms undertaken by the neonatologist on infants admitted to the neonatal unit and postnatal ward of the Hospital San Pio in Benevento, over a 2-year period. Details of scans and concordance between neonatologist and cardiologist were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 160 echocardiographic studies were done by the neonatologist on 136 infants. The ECG was requested in a minority of infants. The most common reason for performing the echocardiogram was admission to the neonatal care unit. Around half of the echocardiograms were normal. The remaining scans resulted in functional and structural abnormalities, transitional changes, and doubtful findings. Cardiac anomalies were significantly more likely found in cases of echocardiograms performed for fetal indications. Only 28 patients were eventually referred to the cardiology services. The inter-rater agreement was satisfactory. CONCLUSIONS: The hemodynamic assessment of sick infants, as well as triaging and referral of neonates with structural heart diseases are valuable advantages of the echocardiography run by neonatologists. Collaboration with pediatric cardiologists and robust training and accreditation programs are essential to ensure safety and quality service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Approximately 10% of infants at birth require some assistance to breathe and 1% require vigorous resuscitation. As such, midwives need appropriate education and training on newborn life support (NLS) techniques., Methods: We conducted a survey on Italian territory about the correlation between obstetric education and the management of the neonatal resuscitation in the delivery room. The study was led through a web survey based on 23 questions, given anonymously online through the Google Drive platform., Results: 272 women aged from 19 to 59 years answered the questions (83% midwives and 17% midwifery students). 93% of them attended an NLS course before graduation, while only 57% have repeated it afterwards once or more times. The midwives working in hospitals with neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) experienced more involvement within the emergency neonatal resuscitation team than the others working in other kind of hospitals (hospital with NICU 79%, hospital without NICU 57%, private hospital 48%; p  < .001). Moreover, the midwives' years of experience at work are much more related to the prompt execution of primary resuscitation maneuvers (more than 10 years of experience 74%, 5-10 years 48%, less than 5 years 30%; p  < .001). Power analysis showed an adequate sample size of the study population., Conclusions: In spite of NLS techniques are taught to near all midwives, only working in hospitals within a NICU and longer work experience are directly related with greater involvement of a midwife in the neonatal resuscitation team.

The aim of the work is to describe the protocol adopted by the Home Care Service in pediatric onco-hematological patients of a large cancer institute in Italy during COVID-19 pandemic and to present preliminary data. Based on our experience, we have developed strategies to ensure continuity of care, non-abandonment, and protection of patients and operators in a period of emergency like this. In this context, the "COVID at home" protocol plays a central role. It aims to be able to safely manage COVID-19 positive onco-hematological patients, allowing nursing and medical care in the home setting, identifying patients at risk for COVID-19 infection, and rationalizing improper accesses to the hospital., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

High order gestation rates have increased in many western countries in the last decades, which is mostly attributable to a contemporaneous increase in maternal age and infertility treatment. Multiple births have been associated with increased maternal and foetal morbidity and mortality during pregnancy and delivery, including the higher risk for spontaneous abortion, preeclampsia, hydramnios, and maternal haemorrhage. A higher frequency of preterm infants and low birth weight infants have also been reported, as well as a higher rate of malformations, abnormal growth, and trauma at delivery, than in singleton pregnancies. We describe herein the case of six ELBW newborns delivered at 27 weeks and their first year follow-up. All the sextuplets survived and did not have extra uterine growth retardation (EUGR) when discharged from hospital. A developmental delay was detected in five infants at 12 months corrected age (CA), but none of them showed cerebral palsy or severe neurosensorial disabilities.

Anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) is characterized by preferential paracortical and intrasinusoidal lymph node involvement by large anaplastic tumor cells expressing the CD30 antigen. Up to 80% of pediatric patients with ALCL can be cured with multi-agent chemotherapeutic regimens. Patients resistant to chemotherapy or suffering from early relapse have a poor prognosis and a poor chance of survival. In these cases, the highly aggressive clinical course of ALCL, associated with systemic symptoms and extranodal involvement, has been treated with different approaches in various cooperative trials, including conventional chemotherapy and human stem cell transplantation (HSCT). However, the optimal treatment has not yet been defined, in particular in cases of relapse. More recently, radioimmunotherapy has been studied with encouraging results in cancer patients, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Here we describe the case of a pediatric ALCL, relapsing after HSCT, treated with pretargeted antibody-guided radioimmunotherapy, obtaining a complete remission, with excellent quality of life over the past 10 months.