Cardiovascular

When a baby is born with a hole in the diaphragm, the heart is squeezed as well as the lungs. Three studies published in 2026 used bedside ultrasound to follow how the heart works before and after the operation that closes the gap. Together they show that the right side of the heart recovers…

Babies born too early sometimes develop high blood pressure in newborn intensive care, and doctors treat it — but no guideline says which medicine to use. Two 2025 studies fill in opposite ends of the picture: one found a large American hospital reached for the same drug about 61% of the time, out…

Many premature babies are born with a tiny blood vessel near the heart that is supposed to close on its own in the first days of life but sometimes stays open. When it does, doctors often use one of two familiar medicines — paracetamol (also called acetaminophen) or ibuprofen — to help it close. A…

When a baby is born more than eleven weeks early, the first few days are a time of intense watching. Doctors in Riyadh recently studied whether a quick, painless ultrasound scan of the heart, done in the first three days of life, could reveal which of these fragile babies were facing the hardest…

When a newborn's circulation begins to fail, doctors often add a steroid called hydrocortisone to the blood-pressure medicines already running. A 2025 review that pooled 20 studies asked a question no earlier study was designed to answer: does it matter when that steroid is started? The answer…

When a premature baby in intensive care shows a low blood pressure but is otherwise pink, warm, and doing well, doctors have long debated whether to treat that number at all. A 2025 international review pulled together 44 studies to answer the question and reached a careful, reassuring conclusion…

Some newborns cannot get enough oxygen because the blood vessels in their lungs stay tightly closed after birth — a condition called persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn. The best treatment, a gas called inhaled nitric oxide, is unavailable in most hospitals worldwide. A trial in Pune…

A large UK study called Baby-OSCAR followed 653 very premature babies who had a common heart-related condition, and it found that giving the medicine ibuprofen early — to close an open blood vessel near the heart — did not help babies survive better, breathe better, or develop better than giving a…

Some babies are born with serious heart conditions known as critical congenital heart disease, or CCHD — heart defects that can become life-threatening in the first months of life unless they are found and treated early. Many of these conditions lower the amount of oxygen in a baby's blood, often…

Before a baby is born, it doesn't use its lungs — it gets all the oxygen it needs from its mother through the placenta. Because the lungs aren't working yet, the fetal body has a clever shortcut: a small blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus that diverts blood away from the lungs and straight…

Before a baby is born, a small blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus lets blood skip past the lungs, which are not yet being used. Think of it as a temporary detour: in the womb the baby gets oxygen from the mother through the placenta rather than from breathing, so there is no reason to send…