Respiratory

A small study from Iran asked whether giving mothers melatonin — the natural hormone many people know as a sleep aid — in the two weeks before a planned early (premature) delivery could help their babies breathe more easily after birth. Every mother in the study also received the standard steroid…

If your baby is in a neonatal intensive care unit and needs help with breathing, one of the most constant tasks at the bedside is adjusting how much oxygen your baby receives. A review of sixteen randomised studies involving 431 premature babies found that when a computer made those adjustments…

A large new analysis has found that azithromycin, a widely used antibiotic, does not prevent the chronic lung disease that affects many babies born very early. Researchers combined the results of six carefully conducted studies involving 1,360 premature infants and found that babies given…

When a premature baby needs help breathing but is not sick enough to need a tube down the windpipe, doctors reach for soft prongs that sit in the baby's nose. A 2025 study compared the two gentlest of these methods head-to-head for the first time and found they worked about equally well, with one…

When a baby is born extremely early, doctors often give a medicine called surfactant that keeps the tiny air sacs in the lungs from collapsing, and researchers have been looking for the gentlest way to deliver it. A large Italian study tested adding a brief lung-opening step just before the…

For a very premature baby whose lungs are still developing, breathing support can go on for weeks, and many of these babies go on to develop a chronic lung condition called bronchopulmonary dysplasia, or BPD. A new study asked whether adding a breathed-in (inhaled) steroid medicine, given as a fine…

A hospital in Dallas found that a simple, standardized way of supporting the breathing of babies born about six to ten weeks early cut the number who needed a mechanical breathing machine by roughly four-fold—from about 18 in 100 down to about 4 in 100—without any increase in complications. The key…

A 2025 study of 130 very premature babies who were still on a breathing machine at about two weeks of age found that allowing their blood carbon dioxide to sit a little higher than usual — while carefully keeping their blood chemistry within safe limits — helped them come off the machine sooner…

When a baby breathes in meconium — the baby's first stool — before or during birth, it can irritate and clog the lungs and cause breathing trouble in the first hours of life. A recent study of 80 newborns in India asked a simple, practical question: for babies whose breathing trouble is mild to…

A large U.S. study found that keeping moderately premature babies on caffeine — a standard medicine for the pauses in breathing common in preemies — did not get them home from the hospital any sooner than stopping it. Babies on continued caffeine had slightly fewer breathing pauses but were…

When a premature baby is well enough to come off a breathing machine, doctors still usually give gentle breathing help through the nose for a while. A new study compared two of those nasal methods in babies born about six to eight weeks early. Both kept the same number of babies from needing the…

When a premature baby in intensive care needs a breathing tube placed, doctors have traditionally removed the baby's nasal breathing support first — leaving the baby with no help at all for the twenty to forty seconds the procedure takes. A 2025 randomized trial in eastern India tested the obvious…