BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Neonatology
The relationship of p50 with clinical outcomes in ventilated preterm infants
Provisionally accepted
- 1King's College London, London, United Kingdom
- 2King's College Hospital, London, United Kingdom
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Purpose: The arterial oxygen tension at which haemoglobin is saturated at 50% (p50) can be used as a marker of respiratory disease severity. We aimed to explore whether p50 was higher in preterm infants who developed bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and extrapulmonary complications of prematurity compared to infants who did not. Methods: Ventilated infants born before 32 weeks of gestation with central arterial access were retrospectively studied. The p50 was measured by automated blood gas analysis in the first three days after birth. Outcomes included BPD, intraventricular haemorrhage (IVH), retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). Results: One hundred and five infants (50 male) with a median (IQR) gestational age of 26.6 (24.9-28.6) weeks and birth weight of 0.88 (0.68-1.13) kg were studied. They had a median (IQR) p50 of 3.34 (3.08-3.77) kPa. IVH was significantly associated with the p50 (adjusted p=0.020, Odds Ratio: 2.9, 95% CI: 1.2-7.1) after adjusting for gestational age. The p50 was not significantly different in infants who developed BPD, ROP and NEC versus the infants who did not develop these complications after adjusting for confounders. Conclusion: Intraventricular haemorrhage in ventilated preterm infants might be associated with an increased p50 in the early days after birth.
Keywords: Blood Gas Analysis, Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia, Intraventricular haemorrhage, Respiratory Distress Syndrome, retinopathy of permaturity
Received: 25 Aug 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kaltsogianni, Nasikas, Harris, Greenough and Dassios. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Theodore Dassios
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.