Neonatal Hyperbilirubinemia: Magnitude and Associated Etiologic Factors among Neonates Admitted at Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia

Background : Neonatal Hyperbilirubinemia is a recognized cause of brain damage and bilirubin encephalopathy resulting in long-term sequel like sensory-neuronal hearing loss in the survivors and death. Objective : To assess magnitude and associated factors of neonatal Hyperbilirubinemia among neonates admitted Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital. Methods and materials: Cross sectional study was conducted. A total of 356 study subjects were recruited in this study. A systematic sampling method was employed to select the desired sample size. Data was first entered to Epi Info version 7 and exported to SPSS version 20.0 to clean and analyze data. Result: Among 356 total neonates, 160(44.9%) of them were diagnosed for hyperbilirubinemia. From these, 11(6.9%) neonates developed bilirubin encephalopathy. Prevalence of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia among male neonates was 89(47.8%) whereas 71(41.8%) was in females. Mean age of neonates at admission with hyperbilirubinemia was 5.29 days. Major etiologic factors of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia were ABO incompatibility and sepsis which accounts 57(35.6%) and 30(18.8%) respectively. Conclusions: Magnitude of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia was quite high. Major factors causing hyperbilirubinemia in neonates were ABO incompatibility, sepsis, Rh isoimmunization, idiopathic cause and breast feeding jaundice. Early prevention and timely treatment of hyperbilirubinemia in neonates is important to prevent or reduce neonatal death due to hyperbilirubinemia.