Cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy analysis in preterm infants with intraventricular hemorrhage.

ABSTRACT

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for cerebral circulation monitoring has gained popularity in the neonatal intensive care setting, with studies showing the possibility of identifying preterm infants with intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) by transfer function analysis of arterial blood pressure (BP) and NIRS measures. In this study, we examined a number of NIRS-derived measures in a cohort of preterm infants with IVH (n = 5) and without IVH (n = 12) within 1-3 hours after birth. The IVH infants were found to have significantly higher tissue oxygenation index (TOI), lower fractional tissue oxygen extraction (FTOE) and lower coherence between arterial BP and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb) in the very low frequency range (VLF, 0.02-0.04 Hz). Further studies with larger sample size are warranted for a more complete understanding of the clinical utility of these NIRS measures for early identification of IVH infants.