Abstract
Background and Objectives: Neonatal mortality rate is an important indicator for public health. With improvement in perinatal management and advances in neonatal intensive care, the mortality of many newborn infants who have life-threatening disease has reduced. Sepsis varies in different area and different times in one area, and is one of the important causes of mortality and morbidity in neonates. Therefore we designed this study to determine the prevalence of neonatal mortality and septicemia and causes of them in newborns that admitted in Imam Khomeini hospital NICU of urmia in 2001.
Materials and Methods: In this descriptive, cross- sectional study, we studied the deaths and sepsis from April 2001 to March 2002. Data were collected retrospectively in the check-list and after processing analyzed statistically with SPSS. χ2 test used for proportion comparing.
Results: Total number of annual admissions to NICU was 210 cases, males more than females (61.4%.V. 38.6%) were admitted. There were 123 (58.5%) preterm infants.
The overall mortality rate was 48.1% (101 deaths) and 81% died during the first week. The commonest causes of death were prematurity (69%), hyaline membrane disease (52%), congenital anomalies (18%), asphyxia (13%), and sepsis (13%) respectively.
The three most isolated organisms were coagulase negative staphylococcus (30%), cuagulase positive staphylococcus (27%), and Klebsiella (18%) respectively, but mortality of Klebsiella septicemia was high.
Conclusion: This study revealed that neonatal mortality rate in NICU of Imam Khomeini hospital of urmia was higher than others centers and staphylococci were the commonest cause of sepsis.