Effects of two modalities of noninvasive ventilation on breathing pattern of very low birth weight preterm infants immediately after extubation: a quasi-experimental study.

AIM: The primary objective of this study was to investigate the effects of two modalities of noninvasive ventilation, continuous positive airway pressure-CPAP and non-synchronized nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation-nsNIPPV, on breathing pattern of very low birth weight preterm infants immediately after extubation.

METHODS

It was conducted a quasi-experimental study at a public university hospital. Infants with gestacional age ≤32 weeks and birth weight ≤1,500 g were randomized into the sequences, prior extubation: CPAP - nsNIPPV (1) or nsNIPPV - CPAP (2). Each preterm infant was studied for a period of 60 min in each ventilatory mode. Respiratory inductive plethysmography was used to assess breathing pattern. Inferential analysis was performed by repeated measures ANOVA or Friedman test.

RESULTS

Eleven preterm infants were studied and a total of 7,564 respiratory cycles were analyzed. No significant differences were observed in any of the comparisons made for any of the breathing pattern variables (p > .05).

CONCLUSIONS

There was no significant difference on breathing pattern between CPAP and nsNIPPV of preterm infants after extubation.