Identifying and treating intrinsic PEEP in infants with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia.

RATIONALE: Infants with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (sBPD) and airway obstruction may develop dynamic hyperinflation and intrinsic positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEPi ), which impairs patient/ventilator synchrony. OBJECTIVES: To determine if PEEPi is present in infants with sBPD during spontaneous breathing and if adjusting ventilator PEEP improves patient/ventilator synchrony and comfort. METHODS: Interventional study in infants with sBPD. PEEPi measured by esophageal pressure (Pes) and pneumotachometer, during pressure-supported breaths. PEEP i defined as the difference between Pes at start of the inspiratory effort minus Pes at onset of inspiratory flow. The set PEEP was adjusted to minimize PEEP i . "Best PEEP" was the setting with minimal wasted efforts (WE), an inspiratory effort seen on the Pes waveform without a corresponding ventilator breath. FiO 2 and SpO 2 measured pre- and post-PEEP adjustment. Sedation requirements evaluated 72 hours preprocedure and postprocedure. RESULTS: Twelve infants were assessed (gestational age, 24.9 ± 1.4 weeks; study age, 48.8 ± 1.5 weeks, postmenstrual age). Mean baseline ventilator PEEP was 16.4 cm H2 O (14-20 cm H 2 O). Eight infants required an increase, one, a reduction, and three, no change in the set PEEP. For the eight infants requiring an increase in set PEEP, there was an 18.9% reduction in WE and a reduction in FiO 2 (0.084 ± 0.058) requirements in the subsequent 24 hours. Conditional sedation was reduced in five infants postprocedure. No adverse events occurred during testing. CONCLUSION: PEEPi is measurable in infants with sBPD with concurrent esophageal manometry and flow-time tracings without the need for pharmacological paralysis. In those with PEEP i , increasing ventilator PEEP to offset PEEP i improves synchrony.

Expanded Prader-Willi syndrome due to chromosome 15q11.2-14 deletion: report and a review of literature.

We report on a male infant with de novo unbalanced t(5;15) translocation resulting in a 17.23 Mb deletion within 15q11.2-q14 and a 25.12 kb deletion in 5pter. The 15q11.2-q14 deletion encompassed the 15q11.2-q13 Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) critical region and the recently described 15q13.3 microdeletion syndrome region while the 5pter deletion contained no RefSeq genes. From our literature review, patients with similar deletions in chromosome 15q exhibit expanded phenotype of severe developmental delay, protracted feeding problem, absent speech, central visual impairment, congenital malformations and epilepsy in addition to those typical of PWS. The patient reported herein had previously unreported anomalies of mega cisterna magna, horseshoe kidney and the rare neonatal interstitial lung disease known as pulmonary interstitial glycogenosis. Precise breakpoint delineation by microarray is useful in patients with atypical PWS deletions to guide investigation and prognostication.