Pulmonary and chest wall mechanics in the control of respiration in the newborn.

Although the respiratory system is not fully developed at birth, the human newborn infant has flexible strategies to sustain breathing and defend blood gas homeostasis in both health and disease conditions. Initially the thresholds for chemoreceptor response to PO2 and PCO2 closely mimic those of the fetus, but the threshold resets to sustain ventilation adequate for blood gas homeostasis appropriate to the extrauterine milieu. The muscles of respiration have been "trained" in utero and effectively assume the function of the respiratory pump, despite their marginal reserve against fatigue. The pliable chest wall is functionally stabilized by the tonic activity of the intercostal muscles, thereby allowing effective ventilation. Finally, expiration is prolonged by the postinspiratory activity of the diaphragm and laryngeal braking as a means of maintaining an elevated lung volume and augmenting FRC. The ventilatory response of the newborn to respiratory disease is limited. The magnitude of the VE response is smaller than that of the adult, and is characterized by an increase in the respiratory rate and a limited increase in the VT. The poor effort reserve of the muscles, especially the diaphragm, predisposes the newborn to muscle fatigue and ventilatory failure. To avoid fatigue, recruitment of accessory muscles occurs, along with laryngeal braking of expiration, thereby decreasing the work of the diaphragm, recruiting new alveoli by an auto-PEEP effect, increasing the FRC volume, and improving gas exchange by an increase in the pulmonary surface area. These mechanisms help to avoid muscle exhaustion and facilitate adequate gas exchange in the presence of lung disease. We do not know precisely the postconceptual age at which the newborn is sufficiently developed to adopt these various defensive strategies of breathing, but the presence of tachypnea and grunting in 28-week-old premature infants suggests that long before term the human infant is capable of remarkable variation in the defense of breathing.