[Surfactant therapy of respiratory distress syndrome]

This review gives a summary of the development of a method to measure lung surfactant on gastric aspirate at birth in premature infants with the purpose to threat respiratory distress syndrome early with targeted surfactant. Machine learning was used to create the algorithm, and a point-of-care spectrometer was constructed for use in the delivery room. The sensitivity was 91% and specificity 79% in a clinical trial. The same method was used to measure surfactant in tracheal fluid in patients with COVID-19 since lung surfactant may be diminished in these patients.