Nitric Oxide in Newborns Study Named Top 25 Research Papers of 2006

Congratulations to John Kinsella, MD, (Neonatology), Steven Abman, MD (Director, Pediatric Heart Lung Center) and John Strain, MD (Chair, Pediatric Radiology) for their study, "Early Inhaled Nitric Oxide Therapy in Premature Newborns with Respiratory Failure" being voted one of the 25 best medical papers of 2006 by the editorial board of The Lancet. The article appeared in the July 2006 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. This honor is extraordinary considering nearly one million research papers are published each year.

The physicians and their associates performed this randomized trial at 16 medical centers. The study included 793 newborns who were 34 weeks of gestational age or less and had respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation. Newborns were randomly assigned to receive either inhaled nitric oxide (5 ppm) or placebo gas for 21 days or until extubation, with stratification according to birth weight.

The authors found that low-dose inhaled nitric oxide prevented brain injury in premature newborns by reducing the incidence of brain hemorrhage, periventricular leukomalacia and ventriculomegaly. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the overall incidence of death or bronchopulmonary dysplasia between patients receiving inhaled nitric oxide and those receiving placebo. For infants with a birth weight between 1000 and 1250 g, inhaled nitric oxide therapy reduced the incidence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia by 50%. Inhaled nitric oxide therapy did not increase the incidence of pulmonary hemorrhage or other adverse events.

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View the full article: "Early Inhaled Nitric Oxide Therapy in Premature Newborns with Respiratory Failure" (.pdf)
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