Controversies in Management of Patent Ductus Arterious in the Preterm Infant

The management of patent ductus arteriosus in the preterm infant is one of the areas of clinical care that is subjected to great practice variation. This is sadly one of the consequences of widespread adoption of closure of the patent ductus arteriosus by pharmacological or surgical means without subjecting the treatment approaches to rigorous randomized control trials. The diverse approaches to treatment currently range from early and aggressive closure of the ductus arteriosus to a conservative approach of watchful waiting for spontaneous closure. This review reviews the complex management strategies of the ductus arteriosus highlighting the areas of greatest controversy that need to be addressed in future trials to provide greatest benefit to the vulnerable preterm infant. *Corresponding author: Bharati Sinha, Assistant professor in Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine, 771 Albany Street, Dowling 4 North, Boston, MA 02118, USA, Tel: 617-414-5519; Fax: 617-414-7297; E-mail: [email protected] Received July 20, 2012; Accepted November 08, 2013; Published November 11, 2013 Citation: Sinha B (2013) Controversies in Management of Patent Ductus Arterious in the Preterm Infant. J Pulmon Resp Med S13: 007. doi:10.4172/2161105X.S13-007 Copyright: © 2013 Sinha B. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.