Respiratory complications in low-birth-weight infants who received phenobarbital
K. C. Kuban, A. Leviton, E. R. Brown, K. Krishnamoorthy, J. Baglivo, K. F. Sullivan and E. Allred
We compared the ventilatory requirements of 127 infants who received
phenobarbital for five days with those of 111 infants who received placebo.
All infants were intubated, weighted less than 1750 g at birth, and
survived the first ten days of life. Those infants who received
phenobarbital did not require ventilatory assistance for more days than did
placebo receivers. However, a pneumothorax or pulmonary interstitial
emphysema was more likely to develop in infants who received phenobarbital
than in infants who received placebo, even when adjustment was made for the
presence of subependymal-intraventricular hemorrhage. We believe this is
the first report of this relationship and recommend additional studies to
test the hypothesis that phenobarbital contributes to the
occurrence/recognition of pneumothorax or pulmonary interstitial emphysema
in very-low-birth-weight infants if phenobarbital continues to be used
routinely as prophylaxis or treatment.
