Abstract

OBJECTIVE

Prematurity is one of the major reasons of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Late preterm birth is defined as birth at 34 (0/7) and 36 (6/7) weeks of gestation starting from the first day of the mother's last menstrual period. In this study, we examined early onset problems of 150 late preterm newborns that were born at İzmir Tepecik Education And Research Hospital, and taken under treatment at the 2nd stage newborn intensive care unit.

METHODS

150 late preterm infants that were born in our hospital between November 2012 and November 2013 and treated at the 2nd stage neonatal intensive care unit were involved in the study. Maternal risk factors of patients, hospitalization reasons, hospitalization durations, problems encountered during hospitalization were recorded and results were statistically evaluated.

RESULTS

The mean of gestational age was 35.17 weeks. The gender ratio of patiens was 64 (42.7%) for females and 86 (57.3%) for males. Hospitalization reasons were;115 (76.7%) respiratory distress, 8 (5.3%) feeding intolerance, and 8 (5.3%) neonatal infections. The major maternal risk factors were preeclampsia (14 patients, 9.3%) and maternal diabetes (10 patients, 6.7%). Eatly onset amongst 13 (8.7%) patients and late onset sepsis amongst 14 (9.3%) patients have been detected, and 66 (44%) patients required phototherapy, and apnea was diagnosed amongst 5 (3.3%) patients during hospitalization.

CONCLUSION

Findings of the study have revealed that late preterm infants often need hospitalization in newborn intensive care units as having respiratory distress, feeding intolerance and newborn jaundice indications. The findings of this study provide data supporting the previous findings of the relevant literature. Results suggest that neonatal intensive care units tend be engaged more in such cases due to the increase in the rate of early preterm births.