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ICU and You · Superpuzzle Series · Number 48

Neonatology

Eighteen clues · companion to Mind Map #31 and Aphorism #35

What these puzzles are for

The crossword is a pretext. Twenty clues is not a syllabus and nobody learns intensive care from a grid. What a puzzle does well is hold your attention on a word for a few seconds longer than a list would, and put a fact beside it while you are looking.

So the clues are deliberately mixed. Some are practice points you should already know and may not have thought about lately. Some are pieces of physiology. Some are history — a person, a case, a year — because knowing where a thing came from makes it stick. One or two are simply odd, and those are in here on purpose: curiosity is the thing that makes the rest of it go in.

Several clues teach rather than test: you will see the answer immediately and learn something getting there. That is the intention, not a failure of construction.

There is a fill it in on screen if you would rather work that way, and a challenge at the foot of the page.

The printable version — grid and clues, nothing to tap. Print it, or fill it in with a pen at the desk.

1615711831617910541412213

On a phone, scroll the grid sideways. It prints cleanly at A4 landscape.

Fill it in on screen  →

Across

  1. 5born with the amniotic membrane still over the head — once thought to protect against drowning
  2. 6metabolite above 100 that points to an inborn error of metabolism
  3. 8infusion that reopens the duct, at the cost of apnoea
  4. 11what you start a term resuscitation in, rather than 100% oxygen
  5. 14waxy coating that reduces heat and water loss at birth
  6. 15fine hair covering the preterm baby, shed before term
  7. 16the corrective steps when the chest will not rise: Mask, Reposition, Suction, Open mouth, Pressure, Airway
  8. 17Dr Apgar's first name — she devised the score in 1953, and the backronym came nine years later

Down

  1. 1phospholipid that stops the alveoli collapsing at the end of every breath
  2. 2…… colour change: one half of the baby flushes, the other stays pale, and it means nothing at all
  3. 3ratio of compressions to breaths in the newborn (three words)
  4. 4…… score, which estimates gestational age from posture and skin
  5. 7…… care, skin to skin, invented in Bogotá in 1978 when the incubators ran out
  6. 8the saturation probe goes on the right hand at birth, giving this reading
  7. 9group B streptococcus, by its species name
  8. 10antiviral added when the neonate seizes or has vesicles
  9. 12the pulses you must feel for in any collapsed baby
  10. 13seconds of delayed cord clamping in the vigorous newborn

Sending your answers

Finish it, or get as far as you get — partial sets are welcome and are how I find out which clue was unfair.

Send your answers

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