Charles Roehr - preterm babies breathing

Thanks to dedicated research, Medical Science is rapidly improving. In particular, the sciences concerned with the management of babies which are born way too early, that is before their due date, which is usually around 40 weeks of pregnancy, is a fast evolving and most challenging field. Today, babies born as early as 16 weeks before their due date have a good chance of survival. Such infants will need intensive care treatment at the start of life, in order to survive. But survival can be associated with significant side effects, such as long standing problems with breathing through early childhood. Therefore, much research effort goes into finding the best possible way to help preterm infants survive without longstanding illness. One way of doing so is to find the most effective way on how to help preterm babies breathe. The aim is to the help babies get air into their lungs and breathe. This is usually done by placing a breathing tube down the babies windpipe. Doctors try to do this without hurting the child or letting the lungs suffer from the process. Once the tube is in place, doctors can assist the baby with its breathing. To do this gently, knowledge of the applied breathing volumes is necessary. Specially designed instruments can give breath by breath feed back on the volume of air going in and out of the lung. Also, the concentration of oxygen can be tailored according to the child’s requirements. The paper presented here investigated a different breathing gas than oxygen, it investigates carbondioxyde (CO2), which is present during normal gas exchange. Several studies have shown that knowledge of the concentration in the breathing gas coming from the baby may have value for the treatment of infants requiring help with breathing. We looked at how reliable the concentration of CO2 can be detected when there is a breathing tube in place. In our laboratory experiment, using a dummy, a breathing simulator and some breathing tubes, we found that the concentration of CO2 in the breathing gas can not be reliably measured in the presence of increasing leak around the breathing tube. This research will help doctors interpret the breathing gas concentrations of CO2 in the future and hopefully help gain more important information on how to best support the breathing of very prematurely born infants.


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