AIM: To determine if pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) in ventilated preterm infants is independently associated with the development of chronic lung disease (CLD) and whether early assessment has any prognostic value. METHODS: Two cohorts (development n = 55; and validation n = 28) of preterm infants were studied at 24 hours of age. PAP was assessed non-invasively using its inverse correlation with the corrected acceleration time to right ventricular ejection time ratio (AT:RVET(c)), calculated from the pulmonary artery Doppler waveform. Clinical and respiratory variables were also collected. Using logistic regression analysis to identify factors independently associated with CLD, a prognostic score was developed to predict CLD. The ability of the score to predict CLD was described using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. RESULTS: Birthweight, inspired oxygen concentration, and AT:RVET(c) were independently predictive of CLD. The area under the ROC curve was 0.96 for the development and 0.89 for the validation cohort. Exclusion of AT:RVET(c) resulted in a reduction to 0.88 and 0.73, respectively. CONCLUSION: PAP is independently associated with CLD. An early assessment of PAP using AT:RVET(c) may permit the early prediction of CLD as part of a multifactorial scoring system.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Subhedar et al. (1998) studied this question.