Hey Y'all--after a long and exhausting battle I finally got the head neonatologist to agree to stop putting NG tubes down babies' noses after they arrived in the nursery. The reason was: to diagnose tracheoesophageal fistula. When I asked him why we were traumatizing 2,999 babies to find the 1 who had TE fistula, he started to listen to me. In our delivery room, we only use bulb suction, not deep suctioning, for routine healthy babies, and the only time we use deep suctioning is for suspected meconium aspiration. So I would suspect that what you are dealing with in some of your hospitals is a deeply ingrained habit, and those are very hard to break. Good luck! Terry Lynn Dise, MD [log in to unmask]