INTRODUCTION
Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), a chronic pulmonary disease that mainly affects extremely preterm infants (< 28 weeks gestational age [GA]), is one of the most common and serious complications of prematurity1 and is associated with increased respiratory morbidity and reduced pulmonary function throughout childhood and adolescence2,3. The condition is a consequence of an arrest of lung development during late fetal and early postnatal life and can predispose individuals with BPD to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in adulthood4. Notably, asthma prevalence is reported to be higher in children and adolescents who were born preterm, and the risk of asthma increases in proportion to the degree of prematurity5. Given that preterm infants with BPD have also experienced early lung injury, they would be expected to have a higher prevalence of long-term asthma symptoms than preterm infants without BPD. However, this association has not been thoroughly assessed, and it remains unclear whether BPD is a risk factor for asthma in childhood and adolescence, irrespective of prematurity6.
Most follow-up studies on pulmonary function and respiratory morbidity in adolescents have focused on BPD occurring in the pre-surfactant era or “classic” BPD, which is characterized by lung damage from oxygen toxicity and mechanical ventilation. To date, improvements in neonatal care have led to a less-severe form of BPD that occurs in more premature infants. Nevertheless, most previous studies on this “new” BPD focused on patients between 6 and 12 years old, but data is sparse on patients > 12 years old7.
This study aimed to evaluate pulmonary function, asthma symptom prevalence, and quality of life in a group of adolescents who were born extremely preterm in the post-surfactant era and developed “new” BPD. The results were compared with those obtained from 2 other groups of former preterm adolescents, who did not develop BPD.