Factors associated with adverse neonatal outcomes of premature babies within their first week of life at the Central Hospital Yaounde

Background

Globally, an estimated 15 million premature babies are born yearly with over one million complications-related deaths. In Cameroon, nearly 90,000 premature babies are born yearly, However, with affordable care, about 75 percent of these could survive. The objective of this study was to determine factors associated with the adverse neonatal outcome of premature babies within their first week of life in the Yaoundé Central Hospital (YCH).

Methods

A quantitative cross-sectional analytical study was carried out on a sample of 113 women whose premature babies were admitted into the newborn intensive care unit (NICU).

A structured self-administered questionnaire was used and data was analyzed by SPSS version 21 software.

Findings

Three research questions guided the study and were tested at a 0.05 significance level using simple percentages and multiple regression analysis (95 % confidence interval, p-value < 0.05). Premature membrane rupture 81.1 %, amniotic fluid color (green/bloody amniotic fluid) 95.7 % was 7.36 [(95 %, 2.08–10.54; P = 0.030)] and 4.24 [95 %, 3.09–5.69; P = 0.018)] times more likely lead to adverse neonatal outcome. The percentage of prematurity factors such as breech presentation, no colostrum, and no use of kangaroo mother care were (86.4 %), (100.0 %) and (86.4 %) respectively. No intake of colostrum [(RR = 2.52; 95 %, 1.08–5.54; P = 0.004)] no kangaroo mother care [(RR = 0.71; 95 %, 0.28–1.18; P = 0.015)] increase the risk of adverse neonatal outcome in premature babies. For institutional factors, the percentages were placing baby in an incubator 70.0 %, reanimating baby 87.5 %, and baby placed on oxygen 87.7 % with the risk of the event occurring being 10.35 [95 %, 3.99–26.82; P = 0.018)] and 11.04 [95 %, 4.24–15.70; P = 0.047)], respectively.