How oxygen delivery in neonates impacts retinal development

While medical advances occur on a wide range of clinical frontiers, perhaps the neonatal unit has witnessed some of the most significant degrees of progress in an area of increasing challenge. It is a relevant reflection that the neonatal intensive care unit is barely 50 years old in the United Kingdom. 

The increasing survival of babies of earlier gestation presents challenges relating to the development of the retina, where the migration forward of its frontier of active retinal cell growth is not complete until the 40th week of gestation. The condition of retrolental fibroplasia (RLF), first described by Terry in 1942,¹ is now recognised as an advanced presentation of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).² Terry was a professor of ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. Such initial observations were subsequently linked to the more frequent delivery of supplementary oxygen to neonates, using incubators of more developed design.