# Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (chronic lung disease of prematurity) Condition · id `maternal:bronchopulmonary-dysplasia` · Maternal & Newborn Atlas · release `c7fb95f1d15a7d13` (public) > General information from published sources, not medical advice, and not reviewed by clinicians. Check the cited source before relying on anything here. The atlas's own text and curation may be reused under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/): credit the atlas, and do not use it commercially. See the atlas About page. Text quoted from a source stays under that source's own terms, given as the source's reuse\_basis. The atlas's reuse terms do not cover it. The downloads list each quotation with its source in third\_party\_quotations. Also called: BPD; Chronic lung disease Browse, life stage: Newborn; Infant follow-up Browse, care area: Preterm and sick newborns ## In plain language A long-lasting lung problem of babies born very early, also called chronic lung disease. The babies generally have inflamed or scarred lungs and need oxygen for longer, by nasal prongs, a mask or a breathing tube. A 2019 review calls it the most frequent complication of extreme preterm birth and says most extremely preterm babies now survive but often develop it. ## Technical summary Definitions differ by source and are not reconciled here. A review in Nature Reviews Disease Primers (PubMed abstract only) calls it chronic lung dysfunction in extremely preterm infants. A neonatal research network page describes inflamed or scarred lungs with the need for oxygen therapy. In a trial of CPAP against surfactant (a paper with an erratum that was not read) the primary outcome was death or BPD, defined as the need for supplemental oxygen at 36 weeks (with an attempt to withdraw oxygen in infants receiving less than 30% oxygen). In a trial of caffeine the abstract reports the share of infants alive at 36 weeks postmenstrual age who were receiving supplemental oxygen. No incidence figure is recorded here beyond what the claims on this page and the bottleneck page state. ## Claims, with the population each applies to ## Context: Extremely preterm infants who survive (review of bronchopulmonary dysplasia) Recipient: Newborn; Population: Extremely preterm infants, as described in a 2019 review of bronchopulmonary dysplasia. The abstract gives no numbers, gestational age limits or setting.; Care setting: Not stated in the abstract (review article); Geography: Not stated in the abstract; Life stage: Extremely preterm infants who survive the newborn period; Gestational age: Not reported; Postnatal age: Not reported; Follow-up: Not applicable (review) ### A 2019 review in Nature Reviews Disease Primers says that, apart from extremely preterm infants with suboptimal perinatal care or major antenatal events that cause severe respiratory failure at birth, most extremely preterm infants now survive but often develop chronic lung dysfunction called bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD, also known as chronic lung disease). It says that, despite major efforts to minimise injurious but often life-saving postnatal interventions (oxygen, mechanical ventilation and corticosteroids), BPD remains the most frequent complication of extreme preterm birth. It describes BPD as the result of an aberrant reparative response to both antenatal injury and repetitive postnatal injury to the developing lungs, with markedly impaired lung development. - Category: Burden - Evidence stage: Evidence synthesis - Certainty: Certainty not assessed - Applies to: Recipient: Newborn; Population: Extremely preterm infants, as described in a 2019 review of bronchopulmonary dysplasia. The abstract gives no numbers, gestational age limits or setting.; Care setting: Not stated in the abstract (review article); Geography: Not stated in the abstract; Life stage: Extremely preterm infants who survive the newborn period; Gestational age: Not reported; Postnatal age: Not reported; Follow-up: Not applicable (review) - Limitations: A review abstract: no figures are given, and the abstract was the only part read (the PMC copy is not in the open access subset). It states no incidence, gestational age groups or follow-up. - Last checked: 2026-10-15 - Sources: 1. Supports: Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (Publication, edition PubMed record (abstract and bibliographic data) from NCBI E-utilities. The full text and the version of record were not fetched.) Locator: Abstract, sentences 2 to 5. Retrieved 2026-10-15T13:49:23Z. Source state: Current. Snapshot hash: 26e8128cc2e48b0d5cadbe05997173ac3e3c73d1d7ec3512f1c458cafc0a8f38. How it applies: Survival, the frequency of BPD and its description. ## Connected pages - Long-term lung care (existing page): Care of the preterm or low-birth-weight infant (`maternal:preterm-lbw-care`) - Filed under this front: Newborn support: warmth, breathing, feeding (`maternal:front-newborn-support`) - Related to: Bronchopulmonary dysplasia remains common among extremely preterm survivors (`maternal:bottleneck-bpd-prevention`) - Related to: Developmental milestones and surveillance (`maternal:developmental-surveillance`) - Evaluated for this: Caffeine citrate (`maternal:caffeine-citrate`) [a claim, not a settled fact; see claim `maternal:claim-cap-caffeine-bpd` and its context] - Evaluated for this: Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for newborns (`maternal:nasal-cpap`) [a claim, not a settled fact; see claim `maternal:claim-support-cpap-vs-surfactant` and its context] ## Provenance Content hash: 03d572c5d9376807387aa7ee6a9d48f8ba246368d576df8aee6712da970065b3 Last substantive edit: 2026-10-15 Evidence last checked: 2026-10-15