Oxygen saturation levels and retinopathy of prematurity in extremely preterm infants - a case control study

Abstract Purpose To investigate the association of risk factors, including oxygen exposure, for developing retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in preterm infants at increased risk of ROP. Methods A case-control study was conducted where each infant born at 21% showed that were was no difference in SpO2 between the two groups when the infants were receiving oxygen support. Conditional logistic regressions showed neonatal surgery significantly increased the risk of ROP (OR = 1.4347, p = 0.010), while the influence of birthweight (odds ratio of 0.9965, p = 0.001) and oxygen exposure (OR = 0.9983, p = 0.012) on ROP outcome was found to be negligible as their odds ratios indicated no influence. Conclusions At times when infants were receiving respiratory support (FiO2 > 21%) the SpO2 data indicated no difference in SpO2 between the ROP and non-ROP groups. Analysis of clinical variables found that neonatal surgery increased the odds of developing ROP