Conditions: Hypoxia
Keywords: Prematurity Apnea of prematurity Intermittent hypoxia
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 98
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this pilot study is to document the extent to which intermittent hypoxia persists beyond the age of discontinuing clinical methylxanthine, and will assess the effect of caffeine treatment on the number of intermittent hypoxia episodes and the total number of seconds with a hemoglobin oxygen saturation (HbO2 SAT) below 90%.

Detailed description:
Infants with prior clinical treatment with caffeine in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) will be enrolled and continuous physiologic data recording of oxygen hemoglobin saturation (HbO2 SAT) and heart rate will begin as early as 33 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA). Randomization will occur when enrolled infants reach a corrected gestational age of at least 34 weeks PMA AND clinical caffeine has been discontinued for at least 5 days. Infants will be randomized to receive caffeine or to continue with usual care. The group randomized to start caffeine will receive an oral loading dose of caffeine citrate of 20 mg/kg on Day #1, followed by a single daily oral maintenance dose of 6 mg/kg starting on Day #2 and continued daily thereafter until 40 weeks PMA. The continuous oximeter recordings will be stopped at the same time. The number of intermittent hypoxia events/hour per week will be compared between the caffeine group and the usual care (no-caffeine) group for each week of physiologic data recordings.

Arms:
arm 1: Caffeine citrate 6 mg/kg/day arm 2: Compare extended use of caffeine citrate 6 mg/kg/day to no caffeine (usual care) in regard to extent of intermittent hypoxia from 35 weeks postmenstrual age (PMA) to 40 weeks PMA.

Interventions: intervention 1: Caffeine citrate 6 mg/kg/day
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Comparison of caffeine citrate 6 mg/kg/day versus no caffeine (usual care) on extent of intermittent hypoxia at 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40 weeks postmenstrual age.

Protocol document: