Prevention of Chronic Lung Disease (CLD) in Preterm Infants

Pulmonary inflammation plays an important role in the early development of CLD. Postnatal glucocorticoids have been shown effective in the prevention or treatment of CLD with various success. However, systemic glucocorticoid therapy often associated with various short term and long term complications. Therefore, modification of the therapeutic regimen is needed. Inhaled steroid, including inhaled budesonide,have been tried but the results are essentially unsuccessful, most likely due to small airways that the inhaled steroid reaching to the peripheral lungs are limited and unpredictable. Direct instillation of budesonide into the airway has also shown to be ineffective, possibly due to poor distribution of steroid in the lungs. The investigators hypothesize that intratracheal instillation of budesonide, a strong tropical steroid, using surfactant as vehicle would facilitate the delivery of budesonide to the lung periphery and would inhibit lung inflammation and improve the pulmonary outcome. The result of our pilot study (Pediatrics, 2008) indicated this high possibility.