NeoReviews Vol.6 No.3 2005 e112
© 2005 American Academy of Pediatrics
Historical Perspectives
Neonatal Transillumination
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Introduction
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As a fledgling intern in pediatrics at the University of Vermont in 1975 to 1976, my first experience with transilluminating the chest of a preterm newborn who had a pneumothorax was an unforgettable milestone in my training. I was amazed at how rapid, noninvasive, and inexpensive this technique was, and how it enabled immediate intervention without the inordinate delays usually involved in obtaining emergency radiography in the middle of the night. What surprised me even more was to learn that this was a relatively new neonatal diagnostic technique, with the first report from Lawrence Kuhns and coworkers at the University of Michigan having been published only a few months earlier. (1) Neonatal intensive care was a relatively new proposition in those days. Mechanical ventilation only recently had been introduced as a standard practice, and the incidence of pneumothorax and other thoracic air leaks in the presurfactant era was very high. Of course, every medical student was taught to transilluminate the skull of a newborn as part of the neonatal neurologic assessment, but this novel approach to using high-intensity visible light to diagnose a pneumothorax rapidly and accurately was exciting. Moreover, it was something even an intern could do.
By a quirk of fate, 2 years later I moved to Ann Arbor for a fellowship in . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Steven M. Donn, MD, FAAP
Professor of Pediatrics
Director, Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital
University of Michigan Health System
Ann Arbor, Mich
Copyright © 2005 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
