Bacterial profiles and risk factors for neonatal sepsis in a rural tertiary care hospital in north India

Abstract

Objectives: To study, the bacterial profile in cases of neonatal sepsis admitted to the neonatal nursery or neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and to identify the risk factors for early-onset neonatal sepsis. Design: Retrospective survey of hospital records from January 2012 to December 2012. Setting: A neonatal unit of a rural medical college hospital. Subjects: All inborn and outborn neonates who either had clinical signs of sepsis or were born to mothers with risk factors for sepsis and underwent a sepsis screen. Neonatal sepsis was defined as positive blood culture in babies younger than 1 month of age who had clinical signs of sepsis or had maternal risk factors for sepsis. Results: 396 neonates were screened for sepsis during the study period, of which 64 (16%) were culture positive. Of these, 42 (65.6%) had early-onset sepsis while 22 (34.3%) had late-onset sepsis (LOS). There were 6 deaths among those who had sepsis (9.3%). The predominant organisms in both early and LOS were Klebsiella and Staphylococcus aureus followed by Escherichia coli. Conclusion: The pattern of isolates is more or less similar to that seen in other NICU across the country. Klebsiella and S. aureus were
two of the commonest organisms isolated in our study.