Abstract

Background: Conventional mechanical ventilation results in an increased risk of acute and chronic pulmonary complications in the population of newborns treated for respiratory failure in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The authors present results of the first stage of application of the non-invasive respiratory support programme with the Infant Flow Advance (IFD) method in newborns, which has recently been introduced in 10 tertiary care clinical neonatal centres in Poland.Material/Methods: We carried out a prospective analysis of 191 newborns that were included in the programme between 1st August 2003 and 31st December. Inclusion criteria comprised occurrence of symptoms of respiratory failure irrespective of its etiology. Respiratory support was provided with the use of ‘Infant Flow Advance’.Results: A high rate of acceptance of the introduced therapeutic method was observed regardless of substantial demographic and clinical diversity of newborns included in the programme. Administration of the Infant Flow method for respiratory support enabled to avoid tracheal intubation in more than 77% of cases and among those only one (0.05%) serious treatment-related adverse event in the form of pneumothorax occurred. Some typical problems consistent with the ‘learning curve’ phenomenon were observed during the study.Conclusions: The results obtained strongly suggest that the new non-invasive respiratory support method introduced in newborns can be efficacious and very useful. However, there is an urgent need for continuous education of nursing staff. An essential issue is to draw up a new reporting protocol in order to improve evaluation of the results obtained.

Keywords: nasal CPAP, Infant Flow, non-invasive respiratory support, newborns, Intensive Care