Respiratory

Caffeine is one of the most common medicines given to premature babies, used for decades to help them breathe. A large 2024 review that combined 15 trials and 3,530 infants found that caffeine probably reduces chronic lung disease and a common heart-vessel problem, and is linked to better movement…

A medicine that doctors have given to premature babies for more than forty years was finally put to a careful, modern test — and the results are mostly reassuring. In a study of 80 very premature infants, a diuretic called furosemide (brand name Lasix) did not add to the overall number of side…

A new study of 89 very premature babies tested whether a painless bedside lung ultrasound—rather than clinical signs and oxygen levels—should decide which babies receive surfactant, the medicine that helps stiff, immature lungs stay open. Babies whose care was guided by ultrasound were far less…

A new study called the ICAF trial tested whether keeping very premature babies on caffeine — a medicine used in nearly every newborn intensive care unit to steady fragile breathing — for several weeks longer than usual would reduce the brief drops in their blood-oxygen levels. The answer was clear…

If your baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), you may have noticed that healthcare staff regularly take small samples of blood and send them to a machine for analysis. These are called blood gas tests, and they are the single most frequently ordered test for babies in the NICU []…

When a baby is born many weeks early, the lungs are often the part of the body least ready for the outside world. Deep inside healthy lungs is a soapy, slippery substance called surfactant. It coats the millions of tiny air sacs and keeps them from collapsing each time the baby breathes out, the…

If your baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit, you have almost certainly fixed your eyes on the oxygen saturation reading — the percentage number on the monitor that rises and falls with every breath. Nurses watch it constantly. Alarms sound when it drops below a threshold. It may have become…

Babies born more than three months early often need help breathing, and many go on to develop a chronic lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia, or BPD. Researchers hoped that adding a small dose of a common anti-inflammatory steroid, budesonide, to the lung medicine these babies already…

Babies born very early — many weeks before their due date — often have lungs that are not finished growing. To survive, the smallest of these babies may need a breathing machine, called a ventilator, that pushes air into their lungs through a tube. The machine is lifesaving, but over days and weeks…