More than four years after concerns were raised about certain hospital tubing devices, the Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged their potential danger to infants.

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I am a neonatologist by training, a “neo-gadgetologist” by passion. I love testing out device prototypes and integrating new technologies at the hospital where I practice. I get excited by their potential to improve care for the infants we treat.

Everyone knows children inherit some things from their parents: their blue eyes, their curly hair, or perhaps their love of the outdoors. Moms take prenatal vitamins and get maternal vaccines like Tdap to transfer health benefits and good antibodies to their unborn babies.

It’s perhaps the oldest partnership in health care – safeguarding an expectant mother through pregnancy, assisting with the miracle of birth, and caring for the new mother and infant afterward. And increasingly, each stage of the process entails doctors treating patients remotely over high-speed internet and telecom connections.

America’s maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the developed world. It’s a crisis of epic proportions. And like many other crises, not all Americans are equitably affected.

Certain hospital tubing devices could actually endanger infants, more new research confirms.  

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As CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota remembers, it was just another day at work. Until it wasn’t.  A routine prenatal check-up for Alisyn, then 30 weeks pregnant with twins, turned life changing when her doctor announced that she’d need to deliver her daughters within 48 hours.

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Hospitals advised to abandon their tubing system may have been misled – news that could come as a relief to parents and health care providers of premature infants.

The trade organization for manufacturers of tubing systems used to deliver nutrition, medicine or fluids to patients recently informed hospitals that their existing devices would be “phase[d] out” starting July 1, 2020.  The organization’s statement explained that the phase-out would make way for a new series of tubing connectors known as ENFit.  The change in technology, the trade organization noted, was meant to “comply” with regulatory guidance and to increase patient safety.

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A new study suggests that an increasingly widespread hospital tubing system could be inaccurate—a dangerous finding for infants.

Tubes deliver food, medicine and blood or other liquids to tiny patients in neonatal intensive care.  Mixing up the various tubes could lead to serious injury, even death. So in the mid-2000s, experts called for a new style of feeding tube connector to reduce tubing misconnections.  

In response, the ENFit style connector debuted in 2014.  Its “male” feeding tube connectors are only compatible with “female” syringe tubes.  While the design reduces the likelihood of tubing mix ups, it ushered in a new issue.

According to researchers, the ENFit tubing connector “significantly increases the opportunity for inaccurate dosing.”

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