We got a phone call from The Children's Hospital -- The doctors at DCH felt that BBC's respiration was good enough to try going off the ventilator tubes and graduate to a CPAP mask.
They asked us to have Baby Boy Chiu join a study to test the beneficial effects of nitric oxide. In the past, nitric oxide has been successfully used to reduce inflammation of the respiratory system in severely at-risk babies, and reducing problems later in the child's life. Now, they wanted to study the nitric oxide's effects for babies with a moderate risk of respiratory development problem.
They considered BBC to be a good candidate because his lung function seemed to be in pretty good shape. We decided that we wanted to help with medical research as long as it was safe for our son. The downside, mostly, was that he would get a little bit more blood taken out of him for blood tests. The upside was that he would get additional screening/attention from the doctors.
Because this is a double-blind test, we won't know for a few years whether he actually received the low-level addition of nitric oxide, or just received plain oxygen.
Here he is wearing the CPAP mask -- he resembles his father who also wears a CPAP for sleep apnea.
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