RT Book, Section A1 Gomella, Tricia Lacy A1 Eyal, Fabien G. A1 Bany-Mohammed, Fayez SR Print(0) ID 1168356187 T1 Neonatal Bioethics T2 Gomella's Neonatology: Management, Procedures, On-Call Problems, Diseases, and Drugs, 8e YR 2020 FD 2020 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9781259644818 LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1168356187 RD 2024/09/19 AB Neonatology has evolved significantly in the past 30 years. Although care of premature infants and their specific disease processes has been studied for the past century, it was the development of the ventilator that truly birthed the field of neonatology. This occurred in the 1960s and was a time of rapid technologic development. These technologies were applied to this new field of neonatology rapidly. We were able to care for children who had previously had no hope of survival. Many of these new technologies had never been used before, and innovation was the hallmark of neonatal care. Although this was essential in saving the lives of literally millions of premature infants during this time period, it also made it difficult to predict outcome or effectiveness of treatment. Issues such as effectiveness of treatment, potential risk to the patient, or quality of life were difficult to determine. However, any treatment was considered better than the hopelessness that these children faced before this era. This “frontier” mentality spurred the application of technology, even in instances where we were unsure of the outcome. This sometimes caused conflict in choosing the best course of action. It was difficult to know when application of technology might be ineffective or might have unintended consequence on the patient’s quality of life.