Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Pediatric Nephrology https://doi.org/10.1007/s00467-023-05979-x ORIGINAL ARTICLE Oscillometric arterial blood pressure in haemodynamically stable neonates in the first 2 weeks of life Judit Klara Kiss 1  · Anna Gajda 1  · Judit Mari 1  · Judit Nemeth 1  · Csaba Bereczki 1 Received: 22 November 2022 / Revised: 29 March 2023 / Accepted: 7 April 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract Background We aimed to provide data on the normal blood pressure of haemodynamically stable neonates. Our study uses retrospective, real-life oscillometric blood pressure measurement values to determine the expected blood pressure in different gestational age, chronological age and birth weight groups. We also investigated the effect of antenatal steroid on neonatal blood pressure. Methods Our retrospective study (2019–2021) was carried out in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the University of Szeged, Hungary. We involved 629 haemodynamically stable patients and analysed 134,938 blood pressure values. Data were collected from electronic hospital records of IntelliSpace Critical Care Anesthesia by Phillips. We used the PDAnalyser program for data handling and the IBM SPSS program for statistical analysis. Results We found a significant difference between the blood pressure of each gestational age group in the first 14 days of life. The systolic, diastolic and mean blood pressure rise are steeper in the preterm group than in the term group in the first 3 days of life. No significant blood pressure differences were found between the group with a complete antenatal steroid course and those who received incomplete steroid prophylaxis or did not receive antenatal steroids. Conclusion We determined the average blood pressure of stable neonates and obtained normative data by percentiles. Our study provides additional data on how blood pressure varies with gestational age and birth weight. Keywords Neonate · Normal blood pressure · Blood pressure percentile · Birth weight · Gestational age Introduction Blood pressure measurements are essential to evaluate the cardiovascular stability of preterm and term infants. Patients who have received neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) treatments have a well-recognised risk of develop- ing hypertension, affecting their long-term cardiovascular and kidney health [1, 2]. Diagnosing and treating hypoten- sion and hypertension are important to reduce the lifelong consequences of prematurity. Over the last 40 years, several studies have provided data on the blood pressure values of preterm and term NICU patients [3–11]. However, defining normal blood pressure remains very challenging in this pop- ulation. The difficulties arise from the different measurement methods, patient population and wide variety of prenatal and postnatal influencing factors examined by different studies [3–11]. Additionally, one of the greatest issues in defining the stable patient group is selecting the interventions that are considered routine in neonatal care. Gestational age and birth weight are known factors affect- ing the blood pressure of newborn infants. Several studies investigated neonatal blood pressure and its influencing fac- tors related to maternal and infant health and therapy, but the results are still controversial [4, 8, 9, 12, 22]. The intra-arterial blood pressure measurement method is still considered the gold standard in the evaluation of neo- natal blood pressure. However, arterial lines are associated with several side effects, making them less frequently used in non-critically ill neonatal patients. Our study provides and evaluates a large amount of data on oscillometric blood pressure values in hemodynamically stable NICU patients intending to determine the normal average blood pressure in patients with different gestational ages and birth weights. * Judit Klara Kiss kiss.judit.klara@med.u-szeged.hu 1 Department of Paediatrics, University of Szeged, Szeged 6720, Hungary