Early Blood Pressure Management in Extremely Premature Infants

Since most extremely preterm infants are critically ill in the immediate postnatal period, establishing "normal" blood pressure (BP) values is difficult. This lack of data makes deciding when to institute therapy for hypotension (low BP) challenging, leading to considerable variability in BP management in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Despite a lack of data on safety or efficacy, as many as 64% of extremely preterm infants receive inotropes (e.g., dopamine), and up to 12.4% of very low birthweight infants receive hydrocortisone for perceived hypotension. Since both untreated low BP and therapy provided for low BP may be harmful, the decision of whether to treat is an important issue. To date, no prospective randomized, controlled trial of BP management in this population has been performed. This trial tests the feasibility of enrolling up to 60 extremely preterm infants in a randomized, double-blinded study of blood pressure management within 12 months. It will enroll 60 infants between 23 0/7 and 26 6/7 weeks gestational age born at 6 participating NICHD Neonatal Research Network sites. Eligible infants will receive a study infusion drug (dopamine or a dextrose placebo) and a study syringe drug (hydrocortisone or a normal saline placebo). Infants will be randomized to receive one of the following drug pairs: (1) dopamine and hydrocortisone; (2) dopamine and a placebo (normal saline solution); (3) a placebo (dextrose) and hydrocortisone; or (4) placebo (dextrose) and placebo (normal saline). (NOTE: dopamine is normally mixed with dextrose and hydrocortisone is mixed with saline solution before being administered, which is why two different placebos are being used in this trial.) The information gathered will provide a framework for the design of a potential larger, multi-centered, randomized control trial. NOTE: The NICHD Neonatal Research Network has received a FDA exemption from the IND regulations for this trial. In addition to the interventional trial above, the NRN is conducting a 6-month time-limited prospective observational study of all infants born at an NRN center between 23 and 26 weeks gestational age. All clinical decisions made for these babies will be at the discretion of the attending neonatologist/infant care team according to standard practice at each institution. Data on blood pressure management in the first 24 postnatal hours collected for each infant. Based on slow rate of recruitment, a time-limited observational study of hypotension in ELBW infants has been added to the current study.