Most adolescents and young adults who had bronchopulmonary dysplasia in infancy have some degree of pulmonary dysfunction, consisting of airway obstruction, airway hyperreactivity, and hyperinflation. The clinical consequences of this dysfunction are not known.

The prostaglandins affect smooth-muscle tone of the ductus arteriosus. Patent ductus often complicates the clinical course of prematurely born infants with respiratory-distress syndrome. In the present study, a single oral or rectal dose of a potent inhibitor of prostaglandin synthesis, indomethacin, was administered to six consecutive premature infants with the syndrome who would otherwise have undergone surgical ligation of the patent ductus. Within 24 hours all the clinical symptoms and physical, echocardiographic and radiographic signs attributable to substantial left-to-right shunting through a patent ductus arteriosus dramatically and permanently disappeared. A transient reduction in renal function was observed in two infants in whom sustained ill-effects did not occur. The observation that constriction and closure of the patent ductus arteriosus may be induced pharmacologically raises important possibilities for the improved treatment of the respiratory-distress syndrome.

Forty patients with karyotypically proven Turner syndrome were prospectively studied using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and echocardiography in order to determine the frequency of cardiovascular anomalies and to assess the utility of both imaging modalities as methods for cardiovascular evaluation in Turner syndrome. Cardiovascular anomalies were found in 45% of patients. A high absolute prevalence of bicuspid aortic valve (17.5%) and aortic coarctation (12.5%) were observed relative to comparable series. Of clinically significant abnormalities, three of five aortic coarctations and four of five ascending aortic dilatations were solely MRI detected and not evident at echocardiographic examination. MRI is thus seen as a valuable adjunct to echocardiography in the cardiovascular evaluation of Turner syndrome patients. The usefulness of MRI primarily relates to its ability to provide excellent visualisation of the entire thoracic aorta where a large proportion of clinically significant anomalies occur in Turner syndrome.

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