Effects of two modalities of noninvasive ventilation on breathing pattern of very low birth weight preterm infants immediately after extubation: a quasi-experimental study.

AIM: The primary objective of this study was to investigate the effects of two modalities of noninvasive ventilation, continuous positive airway pressure-CPAP and non-synchronized nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation-nsNIPPV, on breathing pattern of very low birth weight preterm infants immediately after extubation.

METHODS: It was conducted a quasi-experimental study at a public university hospital. Infants with gestacional age ≤32 weeks and birth weight ≤1,500 g were randomized into the sequences, prior extubation: CPAP - nsNIPPV (1) or nsNIPPV - CPAP (2). Each preterm infant was studied for a period of 60 min in each ventilatory mode. Respiratory inductive plethysmography was used to assess breathing pattern. Inferential analysis was performed by repeated measures ANOVA or Friedman test.

RESULTS: Eleven preterm infants were studied and a total of 7,564 respiratory cycles were analyzed. No significant differences were observed in any of the comparisons made for any of the breathing pattern variables ( p  > .05).

CONCLUSIONS: There was no significant difference on breathing pattern between CPAP and nsNIPPV of preterm infants after extubation.