MEETING ABSTRACT Open Access Does it exist pulmonary hypertension in the ELBW infants?

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) of the newborn is a severe complication that occurs more frequently in term infants but can be demonstrated also in preterm infants. The incidence of PH in preterm infants is currently unknown because it is often masked by the contempor-ary respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), there are not important echocardiography studies in the early transi-tional period assessingthe presence of PH in this popu-lation, and its echocardiographic diagnosis is not always simple. Similarly to term infants, PHin preterm infants can result from an abnormal transition from fetal to neonatal life (persistence of fetal circulation) but more frequently complicates RDS, or is secondary to the abnormal lung growthcaused by maternal pregnancy dis-eases, such as preterm premature rupture ofmembrane