Phototherapy and mesenteric blood flow--too much, not enough, or the wrong kind?

Abstract

‘Give me a light that I may thread safely into the unknown.’—M. L. Haskins in ‘God Knows’ To the Editor. In a recent publication in Pediatrics , Pezzati et al1 describe the effects of phototherapy on mesenteric blood flow in premature infants. Their findings suggest that although standard phototherapy blunts the normal postprandial increase in mesenteric blood flow, fiber-optic phototherapy does not affect this normal response. Based on this finding, they conclude that fiberoptic phototherapy (FO-PT) is preferable to conventional phototherapy in premature infants. Although their finding is of significant interest and certainly worthy of additional study, their recommendation seems premature for several reasons. First, although I don't mean to quarrel with the notion that an intervention that preserves normal physiology may be preferable to one that alters physiological responses, the authors have not shown that the blunted postprandial response shown in the infants under normal phototherapy lights has caused any clinical distress to these infants. Second, in their discussion the authors have cited literature to show that insensible water loss and thus water and electrolyte balance is significantly affected by conventional phototherapy.2,3However, they have omitted newer …