Respiratory

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…

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…