In this era of evidence based practice, there are therapies which still continue to be used despite lack of evidence supporting their use. One of them is the use of bicarbonate therapy in newborn resuscitation and cardiac arrest. Sodium bicarbonate has been used for many years to treat neonatal cardiac arrest and metabolic acidosis. Both animal studies and human studies have however failed to provide any benefit associated with bicarbonate administration. In this article we have briefly reviewed the evidence pertaining to the use of this drug in newborn resuscitation which may be serve as a useful tool to the newborn community to decide for or against using this drug in their day-to-day practice.

Key words: Sodium bicarbonate; Newborn; Metabolic acidosis; Cardiac arrest; Resuscitation.