Monitoring in newborn intensive care.

The major difference between adult and newborn intensive care is the importance in the latter of respiratory problems requiring extensive surveillance and support. Impaired gas exchange in the lung, together with disturbed breathing patterns, often including the temporary cessation of breathing (apnoea), are characteristic of respiratory distress in pre-term infants. New apnoea monitors continue to be introduced, and the recent development of means for the continuous measurement of arterial oxygen in the newborn, thus allowing dangerously high and low oxygen levels to be avoided, must represent a significant advance in both physiological measurement and neonatal intensive care.