Are there any downfalls to putting a premature baby on mechanical ventilation?
Dr. Rojas: Yes, there are downfalls. Like everything, it’s a double-edged sword. There are good things and there are some bad things to it. First of all, it requires the placement of a tube down the wind pipe of the lungs which can damage the airway if left for a very long time. This is followed by placement of the baby on mechanical ventilation. As the babies were followed, we found out that there were some that were exposed to mechanical ventilation and high concentrations of oxygen that developed something that we now call chronic lung disease. Damage to the lungs was due in part to the fact that the way we normally breathe is very different from what the breathing machine does. The breathing machine is basically like if you were taking a balloon and trying to inflate it, putting high pressures into the lungs, sometimes overinflating them. When we breathe spontaneously, our rib cage expands and we create like a negative pressure that sucks in the air, but we don’t put pressure into
