3. Results
During the period of January 2005 to December 2010,
a total of 468 very low birth weight infants survived to the
third day of hospitalization in the neonatal intensive care
unit of the Changhwa Christian Hospital. Among them,
185 (39.5%) had Doppler-ultrasonographic evidence of
PDA. Five infants were excluded, three for right-to-left
shunting and two for severe IVH. PDA spontaneously
closed without pharmacologic treatment after fluid
restriction in 26 infants and 14 sick infants received
surgical ligation without medical therapy. A total of 88
infants received intravenous indomethacin and 52 infants
were treated with oral ibuprofen (Figure 1). The baseline
characteristics were similar between both groups of
neonates (Table 1).