Inside Pediatrics Spring 2025

NEONATOLOGY

Using a decades-old technology, Travers and his team developed a device that can measure a preemie’s lung function with sound waves.

O ne of the most important parameters of a premature baby’s health status is respiratory health. How well are their lungs working? What long-term respiratory complications might occur from the premature birth? Yet assessing lung function in these fragile newborns has long been a complex and invasive process.

Measuring lung function in children and adults is as simple as having them blow hard into a plastic tube. Pulmonary function testing in neonates, however, requires complicated equipment as well as sedation or anesthesia, limiting its use outside of research studies. So, Travers and his team have brought a decades old technology used in adults called forced oscillation technique (FOT) to the NICUs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Children’s. They worked with the device manufacturer to develop a machine designed for small babies. It sends sound waves into the lungs while the infant is sleeping and breathing naturally. The sound waves then bounce off the lungs, providing information on stiffness and resistance in the airways. It can be performed in less than

“Historically, we diagnosed lung disease based on whether a baby needed oxygen or not,” Children’s of Alabama neonatologist Colm P. Travers, M.D., said. “But we didn’t know how severe their lung disease was and what type of lung disease they had.”

Colm P. Travers, M.D.

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Inside Pediatrics | Children’s of Alabama