Professor Henrik Verder has worked with lung-maturity diagnostics on gastric aspirates obtained at birth for over 15 years. With the introduction of surfactant treatment for IRDS, Henrik Verder developed additional lung maturity tests based on gastric aspirates (GAS); for example, the microbubble stability test and lamellar body counts (LBC) as well as a large randomised trial using lamellar body counts to guide surfactant treatment. However, a common problem with all these methods is dilution with foetal urine. Additionally, the methods are time‐consuming laboratory tests and are too slow to be used as a point‐of‐care test (POC) to guide surfactant treatment.
