Respiratory

Being told at a routine pregnancy scan that your baby has a cyst in one lung is frightening, and the honest headline is reassuring: most babies with this finding are born breathing normally and go home with their families. Four studies published between late 2025 and mid 2026 help explain which…

Some babies are born with — or develop after surgery — a build-up of milky lymph fluid around the lungs, called a chylothorax. It is usually treated by draining the fluid and changing the baby's feeds, then waiting for the leak to heal on its own. Four studies published in 2025 and 2026 suggest the…

A small number of babies born very early cannot be weaned off the breathing machine, and their team eventually raises the possibility of a tracheostomy — a small breathing tube placed through an opening in the front of the neck. Three studies published in 2025 and 2026 followed these children from…

Many babies born very early develop a long-term lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and some also develop high blood pressure in the lung's blood vessels, called pulmonary hypertension. Four studies from 2025 and 2026 examined how doctors find this vessel problem, how they treat it…

For some babies born very early, the hardest question is not whether they will survive but how they will finally leave the hospital breathing on their own. Doctors in Memphis, Tennessee, studied 45 such infants and describe a way of removing the breathing tube and switching to strong support…

Bronchopulmonary dysplasia, usually shortened to BPD, is a chronic lung condition that affects many of the most premature babies and can mean weeks or months of extra breathing support. A large United States study called the Budesonide in Babies (BiB) trial tested a hopeful idea: adding a steroid…

Babies born just a few weeks early — between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy, a group doctors call "late preterm" — usually look healthy and full-sized, but their lungs can still be immature enough to cause breathing trouble in the first hours of life. A 2025 study from a women's hospital in Ankara…

When a baby is born too early, the lungs are often the last organs ready for the outside world, and helping that baby breathe without putting a tube down the windpipe is one of the central goals of newborn intensive care. A 2025 research review compared two gentle, tube-free breathing methods — a…

Many babies, especially those born by cesarean, breathe fast and work hard to breathe in their first hours of life because fluid that filled their lungs before birth has not yet fully cleared. This common and usually short-lived condition is called transient tachypnea of the newborn, and a new…

Doctors have always removed a premature baby's gentle breathing support as soon as the baby looks stable, but nobody had ever tested whether that timing is right. A trial in Oregon kept babies on that support for two extra weeks and found that, six months later, their lungs were about a fifth…

Premature babies often lack surfactant, a substance that keeps the tiny air sacs in the lungs from collapsing, so doctors give it as a medicine soon after birth. A study of 138 babies in six Chinese hospitals compared the usual method — a thin tube passed briefly into the windpipe — with a newly…

Premature babies are often given vitamin A in the hope of protecting their fragile lungs from a chronic lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia. A 2025 review combined five clinical trials involving 1,715 very premature babies and found that vitamin A given by mouth did not meaningfully…