Lung ultrasound at 15 minutes after birth predicted need continued respiratory support (Poster)

This poster from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, explored whether early lung ultrasound (LUS) could help identify newborns at risk of ongoing respiratory distress.

The study included 50 infants born at ≥34 weeks and with respiratory distress at birth. They all underwent lung ultrasound at 15, 30 and 60 minutes. Of these, 20 infants (40%) required continued respiratory support and NICU admission at 60 minutes.

Lung ultrasound at just 15 minutes showed promising predictive ability, with an AUC of 0.81. Interestingly, none of the infants with a LUS score ≤5 required NICU admission, giving this cut-off a negative predictive value of 100% in this small cohort. However, a score ≥7 had only 56% sensitivity for predicting NICU admission.

Taken together, these findings suggest that early lung ultrasound could become a useful bedside tool for identifying newborns who are likely to recover quickly, potentially avoiding unnecessary NICU admissions and separation from their parents.

What do you think about these findings? Would the change your ways to evaulate infants or not?