The Man Who Has Two Watches: Dealing with Discrepancies in Clinical Guidelines
Editors: Lawrence F. Nazarian, MD.
Any practitioner who has struggled for years with the dilemma of the jaundiced newborn baby will welcome the practice parameter on hyperbilirubinemia prepared by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).1 Similarly, Gartner's review article on neonatal jaundice, which incorporates the recommendations of the practice parameter, should bring even more joy to the clinician seeking practical guidance.2
Is it too good to be true? Just when an area of clinical confusion appears to be clarified by not one but two guidelines, confusion returns in the form of discrepancies between the two articles. As some alert readers have pointed out, Gartner's main table (Table 1) contains several numbers that differ from those in the corresponding table of the practice parameter (Table 2).
