Introduction
In recent years, respiratory management in the delivery room has shifted towards a less-invasive approach with rising numbers of infants receiving non-invasive respiratory support.1 Multiple trials have studied the benefits of non-invasive respiratory support for spontaneously breathing preterm infants.2–4 Systematic reviews and a meta-analysis support the early non-invasive support in preterm infants with findings of reduced incidence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, death and mechanical ventilation.5 6
The European Consensus Guidelines on the management of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) recommend continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) as the first-line support for the initial stabilisation of spontaneously breathing preterm infants with respiratory distress.7 The International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) introduced CPAP as part of neonatal resuscitation to improve lung recruitment in preterm infants in 2010.8 Since then the use of CPAP has become increasingly common in late preterm and term infants with laboured breathing or persistent cyanosis without sufficient evidence for ILCOR recommendation.9 Term infants treated with non-invasive ventilation in Australasian Newborn Intensive Care Units have approximately doubled within the last few years.10 The use of T-piece devices with expiratory flow restriction to produce CPAP in the delivery room has been associated with an increase in pneumothorax, especially in infants with increasing gestational age.11–13
Since the first use of CPAP as a mode of non-invasive ventilation for preterm infants by Gregory et al in 1971,14 several devices and methods to generate CPAP have been introduced to clinicians. For resuscitation, the number of devices capable of pressure ventilation with positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) to a non-breathing infant and/or providing CPAP to an infant that is breathing is limited. TPR is the most common, but a new alternative is the rPAP.15 Both have the advantage of easy transition between positive pressure ventilation (PPV) and CPAP, but the resistance to breathing and method of generating CPAP is not similar. Previous research has shown differences in the resultant pressure waveforms between CPAP delivery systems16–19 and large differences in expiratory resistances.20
In respiratory systems, the work of breathing (WOB) is the product of pressure and volume, with the mechanical work needed for breathing referred to as total or physiological WOB. Imposed WOB (iWOB) is the component of work added to the patient by respiratory equipment.21 22 CPAP can decrease the total WOB in infants with RDS and surfactant deficiency by increasing the functional residual capacity (FRC), splinting airways and optimising breathing.1 23 However, the WOB may be increased by the added CPAP system resistance from the interface, connectors and device design. It can be investigated in lung models or real patients but is sensitive to changes in breathing patterns such as VT and minute ventilation.21 24
The infant’s effort to breathe causes fluctuations in the pressure waveform around set CPAP levels. Pressure stability refers to the variation in pressures above and below the set mean pressure, the ∆P. Smaller ∆P when comparing CPAP systems with identical respiratory parameters can be described as more pressure stable.17 In bench tests, rPAP has shown lower imposed resistance and more pressure stability with significantly fewer inspiratory and expiratory pressure fluctuations than the Neopuff T-piece resuscitator (TPR).20 In constant-flow CPAP systems, gas flow continues throughout the inspiratory/expiratory cycle resulting in the need for the patient’s expiratory effort to overcome the flow and the resistance of the CPAP generating device during expiration, which leads to an increased expiratory work.25
Lung simulators such as the Neonatal Active Lung Model (NALM) are designed to be programmable, dynamic and react to the tested device. They simulate breathing by allowing the user to set airway resistance (Raw), compliance of respiratory system (Crs) and tidal volumes (VT). The muscular effort needed to produce the simulated breath is labelled as the ‘pressure of respiratory muscles’ (PRM) in NALM.26 PRM is generated with a moving piston within the NALM. Resistance and compliance can be linear or non-linear and in more complex simulations have more than one compartment. The NALM responds with changes in tidal volumes when system pressure and resistance change. Lung model simulators are thus dynamic, but the response is limited as they cannot react actively by changing the respiratory rate or inspiratory–expiratory ratio.
The NALM calculates the total WOB using the area of a pressure–volume loop of a simulated breath.21 This includes the simulated effort limited to inspiration with exhalation considered passive. iWOB reflects the added resistance from the CPAP device and is calculated from the pressure–volume loop at the interface. It can be split into an inspiratory and expiratory part. All measurements of WOB are directly affected by changes in VT, and this makes reporting complicated. To standardise the comparison of devices, either the pressure or the targeted tidal volume needs to be maintained stable.27
The relationship between simulated effort and VT for resuscitation devices providing CPAP during simulated breathing has not previously been investigated. We aim to compare the delivered CPAP performance of two resuscitation devices with differing imposed resistances in a neonatal lung model simulating spontaneous breathing after birth by examining pressure stability, the effect on delivered tidal volume and simulated WOB.