A calculator program for determining indices of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome severity.

The potential for treating and preventing neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) with exogenous surfactant has created renewed interest in quantitative measures and derived scores that can be used to assess disease severity. Many different indices of RDS severity have been suggested. They are useful as outcome measures in clinical trials and may assist in the early identification of infants at risk for severe complications. In this article, a program for the Hewlett-Packard 41CV programmable calculator is presented that calculates indices of RDS severity based on ventilator settings and arterial blood gas values.