The effect of prolonged lateral positioning during routine care on regional lung volume changes in preterm infants

Abstract

This study shows that lateral position up to 3 hours, as part of normal nursing care of preterm infants, has no adverse effects on lung volumes and its regional distribution.

Effect of time and body position on ventilation in premature infants

“…This would explain the differences we found between the spontaneously breathing infants and the infants on respiratory support. Similar to our study, Van der Burg et al (29), in a group of preterm infants on CPAP or with nasal cannula, found that immediately after a position change there was a shift in ventilation distribution with the effect weaning off over the next 3 h. This finding suggests that more regular position changes may be advantageous.…”

“…As found in other studies, the fact that there was no change in oxygenation suggests a change in posture results in the lack of significant alveolar recruitment/derecruitment (25,29).…”

Regional lung function testing in children using electrical impedance tomography

“…Nevertheless, it is one of the largest EIT studies involving human subjects for the determination of regional lung function ever performed. The few previous studies on paediatric patients are limited to 10‐20 patients; healthy children were hardly ever studied …”

“…The few previous studies on paediatric patients are limited to 10-20 patients; healthy children were hardly ever studied. 30,34,[36][37][38] We performed the EIT measurements in one chest plane. At the present time, there exist no clinical EIT devices that are able to record EIT signals in three dimensions simultaneously.…”

Pediatric pulmonology year in review 2016: Part 2

“…Respiratory volumes can also be assessed non‐invasively using electrical impedance. Van der Burg et al were able to demonstrate that alterations of positioning had little discernable effect on apparent tidal volume, oxygen saturation, or respiratory rate. Since there is controversy about the likely achieved tidal volumes with non‐invasive support like nCPAP or high flow cannulae, the use of electrical impedance has been investigated as a possible guide for therapy, but published studies have so far examined relatively small numbers of subjects …”