Muscle Relaxation and Periventricular Hemorrhage

Abstract
To the Editor: We were very interested in the report of Dr. Perlman and his colleagues concerning muscle relaxation and intraventricular hemorrhage in preterm infants with the respiratory distress syndrome (May 23 issue),1 but our own experience with this approach makes us think that caution is warranted before muscle relaxation with pancuronium bromide is widely used in the smallest preterm infants.We followed a line of reasoning similar to that of Perlman et al. in arriving at the conclusion that a controlled trial of muscle relaxation for the prevention of periventricular hemorrhage should be carried out. We showed that (1) . . .