Heart Rate and Pulse Oximetry Dynamics in the First Week after Birth in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Patients and the Risk of Cerebral Palsy

Objective Infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are at high risk of adverse neuromotor outcomes. Atypical patterns of heart rate (HR) and pulse oximetry (SpO (2) ) may serve as biomarkers for risk assessment for cerebral palsy (CP). The purpose of this study was to determine whether atypical HR and SpO (2) patterns in NICU patients add to clinical variables predicting later diagnosis of CP. Study Design This was a retrospective study including patients admitted to a level IV NICU from 2009 to 2017 with archived cardiorespiratory data in the first 7 days from birth to follow-up at >2 years of age. The mean, standard deviation (SD), skewness, kurtosis and cross-correlation of HR and SpO (2) were calculated. Three predictive models were developed using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression (clinical, cardiorespiratory and combined model), and their performance for predicting CP was evaluated. Results Seventy infants with CP and 1,733 controls met inclusion criteria for a 3.8% population prevalence. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for CP prediction was 0.7524 for the clinical model, 0.7419 for the vital sign model, and 0.7725 for the combined model. Variables included in the combined model were lower maternal age, outborn delivery, lower 5-minute Apgar's score, lower SD of HR, and more negative skewness of HR. Conclusion In this study including NICU patients of all gestational ages, HR but not SpO (2) patterns added to clinical variables to predict the eventual diagnosis of CP. Identification of risk of CP within the first few days of life could result in improved therapy resource allocation and risk stratification in clinical trials of new therapeutics.

Automated summary

This study found that atypical heart rate (HR) patterns in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients can predict the eventual diagnosis of cerebral palsy (CP), while patterns of pulse oximetry (SpO (2) ) are not associated with CP prediction.