On 2009/01/20, at 6:22 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
Better: "body mass in kilograms" as in Body Mass Index (BMI).
Dear Gene,
I think that there is a strong case for measuring the mass of new born
babies and young babies in grams — and not in kilograms — as the main
point of interest with these small people is to know if their body
mass has changed and if so, which direction it has taken — up or down.
To my mind, this is conceptually easier to see if the baby has changed
from (say) 3415 grams to 3073 grams than it is from 3.415 kilograms to
3.073 kilograms.
Generally, babies range from the world records of 280 grams for the
smallest surviving baby to 10 900 grams for the largest recorded birth
mass. So babies' masses would be in whole numbers of grams with a
precision and accuracy usually to 4 and less often to 3 or 5 digits.
To keep this accuracy and precision it would probably be best to adopt
a policy of measuring, recording, and communication baby mass in grams
(only) until the child reaches 19 999 grams and then changing to
kilograms in whole numbers above 20 kilograms. In this way you
preserve the benefit to the babies and to small children of the
accuracy and precision in grams until the error reduces to 1 in 20 or
5 % of body mass.
Leaving aside the accuracy and the precision of gram (only) children's
mass measures there is also the consideration of the errors made when
converting between grams and kilograms. Now I can already hear the
raised voices saying, 'But all you have to do is move the decimal
point', but I know that errors can be introduced during this process
that the baby doesn't need right now when it is seriously ill.
Slithering and sliding decimal points is, in my opinion, not an
option. Consider this item from Fox News at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331164,00.html
and note that this is not an isolated case.
##
Hospital Pharmacy Error Blamed for Preemie's Death
Tuesday , February 19, 2008
An error by a hospital pharmacy led to the death of a premature baby
who at one time was thriving, ABC News reported.
Alyssa Shinn was born 14 weeks early to Kathleen and Richard Shinn.
She was frail and tiny but grew stronger in the neonatal intensive
care unit at Summerlin Hospital in Las Vegas, according to the report,
which was published on Monday.
"She was doing excellent," Richard Shinn told ABC. "She had just come
off the ventilator. She was gaining weight. She was starting to take
milk. They just gave her a few drops of milk a day, in a little
dropper. And everything was good to go."
But after the Shinns went home to get some rest on Nov. 8, 2006,
something went wrong. Upon returning to the hospital the next morning
at 9 a.m., the Shinns found their daughter was lethargic and not
moving. Kathleen Shinn said she could sense her daughter was on the
brink of death, according to the report.
It was later discovered that the lead pharmacist on duty at the
hospital the night before made a fatal mistake prescribing to Alyssa
330 milligrams of zinc, a nutritional supplement to help the baby's
metabolism, ABC reported.
The dosage was 1,000 times the 330 micrograms of zinc that the baby
was supposed to receive.
##
As a matter of interest, babies are measured and recorded in grams in
Australia. Here are some typically values:
Australian babies at birth approximate masses
Small baby: 2500
grams
World
record smallest baby: 280 grams
Average baby 3500 grams
Big baby: 4500
grams
World record biggest baby: 10900 grams
Babies below 2500 grams (about 6 % of babies) are regarded as premature.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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