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20 articles
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…