Grant: Operating Grant: ECI grants in Maternal, Reproductive, Child & Youth Health

Modern medical care allows for more extremely preterm-born babies to survive. These patients have immature lungs that tend to collapse and render breathing extremely difficult. Despite efforts to avoid mechanical ventilation, most of these babies will require such support in the first few days of life. The use of a gas ventilator to ensure their survival generates inflammation that damages the lungs. Unfortunately, most babies born before the 25th week of pregnancy that survive will develop chronic pulmonary disease, called bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Altered lung function and neurological development are now clearly associated with this chronic lung disease developed after a preterm birth. Total liquid ventilation, where the lungs are filled and then ventilated with a liquid called perfluorocarbon, has been proven to lower inflammation induced by ventilation and could be useful to prevent lung damage. A ventilator developed by our INOLIVENT team at the 'Université de Sherbrooke' now allows for the precise control of liquid ventilation parameters. We can thus now refine liquid ventilation techniques in order to use this advanced respiratory support on the premature infant to reduce lung damage and potentially prevent bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Our multidisciplinary team has already put in place the techniques to assess the effect of different liquid ventilation strategies on the heart and lung and to evaluate the inflammatory response using a term lamb model. The aim of the current project is to use a preterm lamb model to evaluate the clinical potential of total liquid ventilation to limit lung inflammation induced by mechanical ventilation when compared to conventional gas ventilation.