Let’s put Frosty Puppy News aside for a minute, and return to the 40 greatest advancements in pediatrics. Number 4. survival of premature babies with the use of Surfactant.
Sometime in the 1980s I heard a lecture at the Irish and American Pediatric Society meeting. There a pediatrician from Ireland discussed a new treatment for pre-mature babies with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS).
He explained that if you connect a barely inflated balloon and an almost fully inflated balloon, with a hollow tube, the air will flow from the small balloon into the larger one. A similar thing happens in the lungs of premature babies. As the premature baby’s lungs inflate, air flows from the barely inflated air sacs into those who are already inflated. This allows the small air sac to completely deflate and collapse when the baby exhales and prevents the lungs from fully inflating. This phenomenon limits the lungs ability to pass oxygen into the baby’s blood stream. It may also cause the overinflated air sacs to further expand and burst collapsing the entire lung.
He went on to say that premature lungs lack surfactant, a substance (detergent actually) which keeps the air in small air sacs and prevents the above chain of events.
Knowing this, researchers sprayed detergent into premature sheep lungs and were able to significantly reduce RSD and mortality in these lambs. With permission from Ireland’s government research and ethic committees, they used the detergent, surfactant, in human babies. The results have been spectacular.
Today, premature babies are treated with surfactant to prevent RSD. Infant mortality from RDS has dramatically declined from about 25,000 deaths per year in the 1960s to 860 deaths in 2005.
Many “mature” readers (older) will remember that President Kennedy’s baby died of RSD. If he had been born after the discovery of surfactant, he most likely would have survived. Who knows, he might be running for president himself!
Thanks to surfactant and other advances in neonatology, most premature babies survive to have happy lives, as do their parents and neonatologists.
The pictures are from the website: L’il aussie Prems Foundation. Visit their site
Name: Jack
Gestation Born: 30 weeks gestation
Weight: 1105 grams
Time spent in hospital: 62 days
Age Now: 3 years, 11 months