Associated Factors and Common Pathogens of Positive Cultures in Infants With Definitive Septicemia Admitted to NICU

Immune system immaturity in newborns exposes them to infections, among which bloodstream infection is of great importance due to high mortality and morbidity and treatment costs. The aim of the present study was to evaluate common pathogens in blood culture positive cases and its determinants. This study was conducted in two phases, including a cross-sectional phase to collect the cases of definitive septicemia and a case-control phase on neonates admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Vali-e-Asr Hospital with clinical suspicion of sepsis during 2015-2019. The eligible cases were selected based on the study criteria. After extracting descriptive statistics, to evaluate causal relationships, culture-positive and culture negative cases were compared in terms of neonatal disease in the second phase. SPSS-22 was used for data analysis. The most common bacterial families were Staphylococcus (34.30%), Acinetobacter (10.46%), and Klebsiella (7.55%), among which coagulase negative Staphylococcus was the most common organism (13.08%). The most common antibiotics prescribed were ampicillin (75.1%), amikacin (58%), and gentamycin (44.8%). Factors that had a significant association were the occurrence of septicemia were gestational hypertension, premature rupture of membranes, conjunctivitis, TORCH infections, and low gestational age. The results of this study will be helpful in anticipation and management of neonatal septicemia through shedding light on some determinants of common blood culture pathogens like infections and obstetric complications in NICU admitted neonates.