The Incubator

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Ben and Daphna sit down with Dr. Scott, pediatrician, neonatologist, and inventor of the Tortle. She shares how a simple observation in her Idaho practice, babies developing flat heads despite diligent parents, sparked a second career in medical device innovation. The conversation covers the evolution from the original corrective beanie to the Midliner and Transpo...

Send us Fan Mail Does the latest Cochrane evidence finally tip the balance in favor of erythropoiesis stimulating agents in preterm infants? In this VON Grand Rounds follow-up episode, Ben sits down with Dr. Roger Soll and Dr. Souvik Mitra to review the 2026 Cochrane systematic review on early ESA use in preterm newborns. Across 37 trials and over 6,000 infants, early ESAs consistently reduce the...

Send us Fan Mail Neonatal sepsis physiology, steroids, vasopressors, and moms.gov . A full week on The Incubator Journal Club. Adrianne and Nim open with a retrospective study from Toronto challenging the assumption that hypoxemic respiratory failure in septic preterm infants is driven by elevated pulmonary vascular resistance. The data points instead to left ventricular dysfunction as a key contr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Neo News, Ben and Eli discuss the federal government's Mother's Day press conference and the launch of moms.gov , a new website aimed at supporting new and expecting mothers. They examine what the administration got right, including the real barriers families face in accessing maternal care and the economic challenges of having children in America toda...

Send us Fan Mail In this double-blind randomized controlled trial, Adrianne and Nim examine whether norepinephrine outperforms dopamine as a first-line vasoactive agent in neonates with fluid-refractory septic shock. The primary outcome, shock reversal at 30 minutes, was not significantly different between groups, at 32 percent for norepinephrine and 46 percent for dopamine. Secondary outcomes inc...

Send us Fan Mail In this double-blind randomized controlled trial from northern India, Nim and Adrianne review whether early hydrocortisone reduces 14-day all-cause mortality in preterm infants with fluid-refractory shock. The primary outcome showed no statistically significant difference between groups, though an 11 percent absolute reduction in mortality in the hydrocortisone group raised clinic...

Send us Fan Mail In this retrospective single-center study from Toronto, Adrianne and Nim explore the echo findings of preterm infants with septic shock and hypoxemic respiratory failure. Contrary to the common assumption that elevated pulmonary vascular resistance drives hypoxemia in sepsis, the data points to left ventricular dysfunction as a key contributor. Babies with hypoxemic respiratory fa...

Send us Fan Mail What would it really mean to shorten neonatology fellowship training to two years? In this episode, Ben and co-host Dr. Shetal Shah sit down with three division heads, Dr. Jill Maron (Brown), Dr. Patrick McNamara (University of Iowa), and Dr. Sarah Taylor (Yale), to examine the ABP's proposed changes from the perspective of those who run major academic NICUs. From the operati...

Send us Fan Mail What does it mean to truly improve outcomes for very low birth weight infants, and are we actually doing it? In this episode, Daphna sits down with Dr. Joseph Kaempf, neonatologist and Medical Director of Value Research and Innovation at Providence Health System in Oregon, to examine some uncomfortable truths about neonatal quality improvement. Dr. Kaempf shares findings from a st...

Send us Fan Mail Phototherapy duration, jaundice and UTIs, extended CPAP, and The Pitt. A full week on the Incubator Journal Club. Ben opens with a nationwide Swedish cohort study from JAMA Network Open examining phototherapy duration in nearly 5,000 very preterm infants. Longer phototherapy was not significantly associated with late neonatal mortality, but six to seven days was associated with si...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Neo News, Ben and Eli discuss the cultural phenomenon of HBO Max’s new hit medical drama, The Pitt. Sparked by an insightful critique in The New Yorker by Dr. Dhruv Khullar, they dive into why this Noah Wyle-led series is capturing the attention of millions of Americans, including healthcare workers and patients alike. They explore how the show’s unflinching por...

Send us Fan Mail Is five days of antibiotics enough to treat a urinary tract infection in a NICU infant? In this Journal Club episode, Ben and Daphna review a single-center study from Nationwide Children's Hospital examining adherence and safety of a five-day antibiotic treatment guideline for culture and urinalysis-proven UTIs in the NICU. Among 77 infants with 93 bacterial UTIs, the five-da...

Send us Fan Mail What happens to intermittent hypoxemia when you keep a stable preterm infant on CPAP for two extra weeks? In this Journal Club episode, Ben and Daphna review a secondary analysis from the Journal of Pediatrics by Mamidi and McEvoy. Among 95 infants randomized to either two additional weeks of bubble CPAP on room air or discontinued CPAP, those in the extended CPAP group experience...

Send us Fan Mail In this Journal Club episode, Daphna reviews a retrospective cohort study from Istanbul examining clinical, laboratory, and ultrasound factors associated with UTI in neonates hospitalized for unexplained hyperbilirubinemia. Among 96 term and near-term infants, 31% had culture-proven UTIs, a striking prevalence. Pathological renal ultrasound findings were independently associated w...

Send us Fan Mail In this Journal Club episode, Ben and Daphna review a nationwide Swedish cohort study examining the association between phototherapy duration and neonatal outcomes in very preterm infants (22 to 31 weeks). The study’s primary outcome, late neonatal mortality on days 8 to 27, was not significantly associated with phototherapy duration. However, longer phototherapy exposure was asso...

Send us Fan Mail What if closing a PDA could be done at the bedside in under 10 minutes, without transporting a fragile preterm infant to the cath lab? Dr. Shyam Sathanandam, Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at Nicklaus Children's Heart Institute, joins us to discuss the evolution of transcatheter PDA closure in extremely preterm infants. We cover how bedside procedures protect the most vulne...

Send us Fan Mail Opioid withdrawal dosing, intranasal breast milk, human milk fortification in Japan, neonatal dysphagia, and vaccine policy. A full week on the Incubator Journal Club. Ben opens with the Optimized NOW trial in JAMA: symptom-based dosing reduced time to medical readiness for discharge by nearly two and a half days in NOWS infants managed with Eat Sleep Console, and allowed 65% of p...

Send us Fan Mail In this fast-paced episode of Neo News, Eli and Ben tackle the rapidly shifting landscape of vaccine regulation and economics in the US. They discuss recent political maneuvers surrounding the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and how expanding liability could quietly push manufacturers out of the market entirely. The hosts also examine the FDA's recent hesitation to...

Send us Fan Mail How often are we missing dysphagia in our most vulnerable NICU patients? In this episode of Journal Club, Daphna reviews a retrospective cohort study from the Journal of Perinatology examining the incidence and risk factors of dysphagia confirmed by flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) in very preterm and very low birth weight infants. Among infants showing persiste...

Send us Fan Mail What does it take to turn a single struggling baby into a national standard of care? In this episode, Ben sits down with Professor Katsumi Mizuno (Showa Medical University) and Dr. Melinda Elliott (Chief Medical Officer, Prolacta Bioscience) to discuss the landmark Jasmine Trial, the first randomized controlled trial of an exclusive human milk diet (EHMD) in Japan. The results: si...

Send us Fan Mail Japan has some of the best survival rates for extremely preterm infants in the world, yet feeding practices there look very different from what many of us are used to. In this episode of Journal Club, Ben reviews the JASMINE trial, a multicenter phase three randomized controlled trial evaluating an exclusive human milk diet compared to a standard cow milk-based diet in very low bi...

Send us Fan Mail Could putting a few drops of breast milk in a preterm infant's nose actually improve cerebral oxygenation? In this episode of Journal Club, Daphna reviews a randomized controlled trial from the European Journal of Pediatrics investigating the physiologic effects of intranasal expressed breast milk (EBM) administration in preterm infants. The study found that infants receiving...

Send us Fan Mail One infant is diagnosed with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome every 27 minutes, and rates are rising. In this episode of Journal Club, Ben and Daphna review the Optimized NOW randomized clinical trial, a landmark multicenter study published in JAMA. The trial compared symptom-based dosing,  a single opioid dose given when a withdrawal threshold is met against the traditional sc...

Send us Fan Mail The NICU is one of the loudest environments a newborn will ever experience, yet it is also where the most vulnerable infants spend their earliest, most developmentally critical days. In this Tech Tuesday episode, Ben and Daphna sit down with Gabby Daltoso and Sophie Ishiwari, co-founders of the Sonura Beanie. Their device tackles two pressing NICU challenges at once: harmful noise...

Send us Fan Mail Every neonatologist has built a protocol or written a guideline, and most have done it completely alone. In this episode, Ben sits down with Dr. Christina Muffy Sollinger (UC Davis) and Dr. Sarvin Ghavam (CHOP), the co-founders of NeoGuide, a national collaborative dedicated to connecting clinicians around the shared work of clinical guidelines and practice pathways. Born from a s...