TY - JOUR T1 - Fantoms JF - Archives of Disease in Childhood - Fetal and Neonatal Edition JO - Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed SP - 95 LP - 95 DO - 10.1136/archdischild-2023-325422 VL - 108 IS - 2 AU - Ben J Stenson Y1 - 2023/03/01 UR - http://fn.bmj.com/content/108/2/95.abstract N2 - Elizabeth Oliphant and colleagues report the outcomes of a double-blind placebo controlled randomised dosage trial of caffeine for late preterm infants. Their focus was on finding a suitable dose to prevent intermittent hypoxaemic (IH) events between 34 weeks gestation and term equivalent age in infants born between 34+0 and 36+6 weeks gestation. Intermittent hypoxic events were defined as falls in SpO2 of 10% or more lasting less than 2 min. Four dosing regimens were evaluated. Compared with placebo, IH was significantly reduced in the combined groups of infants treated with caffeine. There were variations in observed effects between individual dosage groups, so that effects were statistically significant in some but not others. The authors argue that the 20 mg/kg/day dose would be the best for further evaluation. There was a small reduction in time with SpO2<90% and a small increase in baseline SpO2. Important adverse effects were not identified but the total number of infants studied was 132, so there was limited power to identify infrequent events. The authors are interested in determining whether reducing intermittent hypoxaemia during these weeks might be associated with later neurodevelopmental … ER -