Introduction:Using nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for neonatal respiratory support is highly increasing in low and middle-income countries. It reduces the needs for mechanical ventilation in neonates with respiratory distress (RD) in tertiary hospitals.
Objectives:This is a prospective non-randomized study aims to evaluate the role and efficiency of bubble CPAP in treatment of neonatal respiratory distress and correlation of bubble CPAP failure with different studied demographic, clinical and laboratory variable data.
Patients and methods: The study included all neonates with respiratory distress admitted to neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) - Minia University hospital from 1st of January to 31st of December 2017.The study analyzed the rate of failure and response of management of those patients on bubble CPAP and compared them with other different treatment modalities according to variable recorded demographic, clinical and laboratory data.
Results: Among the 280 cases, 149 patients (53.2%) were treated with oxygen, 52 patients (18.6%) needed to be treated with bubble CPAP, 79 patients (28.2%) needed to be intubated and mechanically ventilated (MV). Our study showed more incidences of bubble CPAP therapy of RD cases with higher gestational ages and birth weight, milder grades of RD, absence of sepsis in comparison with mechanical ventilation and vice versa for comparison with nasal oxygen therapy.
Conclusion:CPAP is an effective treatment of RD leading to significant improvement of outcome reducing hospital stay, need for invasive mechanical ventilation with its harmful adverse effects and thus the case fatality rate of RD cases and so the overall mortality rate of the NICU.