I was born premature.
What impact could that have on the structure of my lungs,
my breathing when I sleep, and my physical activity levels?
Would having an MRI of my lungs help answer this?
Thank you for the question.
Children who are born extremely preterm, particularly those
who have bronchopulmonary dysplasia
or BPD, are at risk of having persisting lung abnormalities.
This is because if you're born
extremely preterm, your lungs have not yet had a chance to fully develop.
Our study looked at whether MRI of the lungs,
a way of taking pictures of the lungs would help
to define those pulmonary abnormalities and look for differences
between those children who had BPD and those who didn't.
We recruited 35 children
who are school aged between the ages of seven and nine years,
and all of them underwent a lung MRI and a pulmonary function test.
What we found was that we could detect structural lung abnormalities
that were more present in the children
who had a history of BPD compared to those who did not.
We also, as part of this study, looked at differences in physical activity
and sleep patterns between children who had a history of BPD
and those who didn't and found no differences.
The next steps for
this research are going to be to embark on a larger CIHR
funded study that's going to be carried out at four centers across Canada.
In this study, we're going to be looking at MRI
of the lung in newborns who were born extremely preterm
and determining if the findings on the MRI will help us
predict their respiratory problems over the next two years of life.