Neonatal mortality rate in a metropolitan hospital-A 15-year experience

Abstract

The neonatal mortality rate reflects the standard of living and quality of perinatal care. Neonatal mortality was analysed in the San Juan de Dios Hospital, Santiago, Chile, during a 15 year period from 1983 to 1997. During the study period 108,374 live infants were born, of them 1,190 have died. The neonatal mortality rate has significantly decreased from 15.3 in 1983 to 6.9 per 1000 live newborn infants in 1997. This decrease has been observed for each 500 g subgroup, mainly in babies between 1,000 and 1.499 g. Deaths occurred in 21% in the first hour and in 52% in the first day of life. Leading causes of death have been classified into major pathological subgroups, based on the suggestions of Wigglesworth et al. The most frequent causes of death were conditions associated with prematurity (45%), congenital malformations (21%), infections (17%), perinatal hypoxia (13%) and miscellaneous (4%). The overall and specific birth weight neonatal mortality rate have decreased due to several factors such as resident neonatologist since 1983, availability of single-use disposible materials available since 1990 and exogenous surfactant available in 1991 and 1994.