Association between dopamine and cerebral autoregulation in preterm neonates

To test the hypothesis that dopamine is associated with impaired cerebral autoregulation (ICA) in a dose-dependent fashion. Non a priori designed secondary analysis of a prospectively enrolled cohort study subjects <12 h of life between 240 and 296 weeks gestation. Cerebral saturations (rScO2) and mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) were continuously monitored every 30 s for 96 h. ICA was defined by a 10 min epoch rScO2-MAP correlation coefficient of >0.5. Twenty-three of 61 subjects (38%) required dopamine. Time spent with ICA was 23% in dopamine-exposed subjects vs. 14% in those not exposed (p = 0.0001). On the epoch level, time spent with ICA was 15%, 29%, 34%, 37%, and 23% in epochs with dopamine titration of 0, 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, and 16–20 μg/kg/min, respectively. Using mixed-effect modeling, ICA for each dopamine titration was significantly higher than unexposed times when controlling for gestation, presence of a patent ductus arteriosus, day of life, MAP less than gestational age, and illness severity score (p < 0.02). Dopamine exposure during the first 96 h was associated with ICA. Time periods with ICA increased with dopamine exposure in a dose-dependent fashion peaking at a concentration of 11–15 μg/kg/min.