....Beginning to See the Light

In March 1952, Mollison and Walker1 reported the results of their prospective, randomized, controlled trial on the effect of exchange transfusion v simple transfusion in infants with severe erythroblastosis fetalis. They showed that exchange transfusion led to significantly lower mortality and a much lower incidence of fatal kernicterus. In the interim, numerous published studies have examined the relation between serum bilirubin levels in the neonatal period and the postmortem finding of kernicterus or the presence of later, clinical, bilirubin encephalopathy. With few exceptions, the design of these studies has made interpretation of their results hazardous, if not nugatory.2 We now have a study from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)3 in which the population is sufficiently large and the study design sufficiently rigorous to permit actual, if tentative, conclusions concerning the effect of a different intervention (phototherapy) upon the immediate and later outcome of jaundiced newborn infants.