Senior Investigator, Lady Davis Institute Neonatologist, Jewish General Hospital
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, McGill University
Dr. Lajos Kovacs completed both his pediatric residency training and neonatal fellowship at McGill University, and has been an active member of the Department of Neonatology at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal since 1993. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at McGill University and has been the neonatology rotation coordinator for pediatric residents for the past several years. His particular interest lies in neonatal pulmonary and infectious diseases, and he has been involved in numerous clinical research projects over the years. Dr. Kovacs has been instrumental in the development and management of a computerized database of all very low birth weight infants admitted to the Jewish General Hospital since 1993. It collects extensive data from both the initial hospitalization and follow-up visits. This dataset is the basis of many abstracts presented at the annual meetings of pediatric academic societies. In addition, as a member of the Canadian Neonatal Network since 2002, Dr. Kovacs coordinates local data extraction and monitors the quality of data entry for a larger national database of all infants admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. This data allows for benchmarking of the JGH site against other Canadian perinatal centres, and is a stepping-stone to additional research efforts to improve the outcomes for premature infants.Major Research ActivitiesDr. Kovacs is the local investigator in a Canadian multicentre trial examining the influence of the age of transfused red blood cells on the outcomes of very low birth weight infants.
He is also the local investigator in a worldwide multicentre trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of a monoclonal antibody preparation in the prevention of staphylococcal nosocomial sepsis in very low birth weight infants. Dr. Kovacs is collaborating with Dr. Guilherme Sant’anna of the MUHC in determining whether measurements of heart rate and respiratory rate variability could help to predict the success of extubation in ventilated very low birth weight infants.Recent PublicationsFergusson D, Hutton B, Hogan DL, Lebel L, Blajchman MA, Ford JC, Hebert P, Kakadekar A, Kovacs L, Lee S, Sankaran K, Shapiro S, Smyth JA, Ramesh K, Bouali NR, Tinmouth A, Walker R. The age of red blood cells in premature infants (ARIPI) randomized controlled trial: study design. Transfus Med Rev. 2009 Jan; 23(1):55-61.Robinson JL, Davies HD, Barton M, O’Brien K, Simpson K, Asztalos E, Synnes A, Rubin E, Le Saux N, Hui C, Langley J, Sauve R, de Repentigny L, Kovacs L, Tan B, Richardson S. Characteristics and outcome of infants with candiduria in neonatal intensive care - a Paediatric Investigators Collaborative Network on Infections in Canada (PICNIC) study. BMC Infectious Diseases 2009; 9:183.Menard S. Kovacs L, Papageorgiou A. The price of being SGA before 32 weeks of gestation. E-PAS 2009:65:4351.374. |