1035 SKIN OXYGEN PERMEABILITY IN PREMATURE INFANTS

Abstract

Human skin is permeable to O₂ but the Po₂ on the unheated intact skin is below 3.5 torr in adults and below 7 torr in term infants, both during air and O₂ breathing. In small premature infants, however, we found skin Po₂ to be much higher.

We measured the Po₂ on the nonheated skin surface with an unheated HUCH tcPO₂ electrode in 24 newborn infants (gesta. 24-41 wks) at various F_iO₂ levels. The infants were studied in a thermoneutral environment at age 2-48 hrs. When the arterial O₂ tension (PaO₂) was 50-100 torr the mean surface Po₂ of unheated skin was 27.2 (range 19-38) torr in infants <1500g, 14.3 (4-23) torr and those of 1500-2500g and 2.9 (2.5-5.0) torr in infants >2500g. Skin temperatures were not different between these groups. In contrast to adults and term infants, in infants <1500g the skin surface Po₂ correlated with the PaO₂ up to 100 torr (“unheated” skin Po₂=0.33 PaO₂+5.42; r=0.76). Crying, blood transfusion and phototherapy markedly increase the skin Po₂ suggesting that a higher skin blood flow contributes more than differences in skin diffusion resistance or metabolism to the higher skin surface Po₂ in resting premature babies.

The concept of the unheated skin as a virtually oxygen tight system obviously has to be revised for premature infants.

Practical implications however, must remain a matter of speculation since oxygen fluxes across the unheated skin have not been measured in small premature infants. Supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 147 and Ve 32/3).

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