Determining how babies breathe at birth using Electrical Impedance Tomography

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The purpose of this study is determine how the lungs start breathing air immediately after birth. We know that during the pregnancy the baby’s lungs are filled with fluid but that immediately after birth the lungs need to very quickly clear the fluid and replace it with air so normal breathing can begin (this is called ‘aeration’). Some babies struggle to do this and develop breathing problems immediately after birth. This is very common in babies born prematurely but also occurs in at least 10% of healthy term babies. It is known from studies in animals that the process of aeration is very complex and breathing problems are most likely if aeration does not occur equally throughout both lungs at birth. At present we don't know how babies lungs aerate at birth, despite this being something every baby needs to do. This is because measuring aeration is hard to do. Recently, our team have developed a special method of measuring aeration at birth, it uses a simple device called electrical impedance tomography or EIT). EIT does not interfere with the normal behaviour of a baby or their clinical care, and is free from radiation (unlike x-rays), meaning that EIT can measure aeration and breathing in a baby for long periods of time. We would like to use EIT describe, for the first time, how healthy term and preterm lungs aerate immediately after birth. This will assist us in determining how we may be able to better understand how to develop treatments for sick babies who cannot achieve aeration properly.

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