ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the long-term outcomes of infants who developed BPD are described. It is important to emphasize that the reports of older children and adults include patients with “classical” BPD. Such patients often had severe respiratory failure in the neonatal period, but also had more nonpulmonary acute complications such as intracerebral hemorrhage, which would have adversely affected their long-term outcome. Nowadays, infants can become chronically oxygen dependent despite minimal or even no respiratory distress immediately after birth and are described as suffering from “new” BPD (1). Such infants suffer less pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis but have reduced alveolarization (2). Whether affected children experience catch-up growth is not known, if they do not then their long-term pulmonary outcome could potentially be worse than that of those who had classical BPD.
