Preterm Very Low-Birth Weight Babies: Outcome of Admitted Newborns at a Community-Level Medical College Hospital in Bangladesh

y, mainly due to infections and complications of prematurity. The present article is a descriptive analysis of the most common reasons for hospital admission of VLBW infants, morbidity during hospital stay, and their immediate outcome at a community level medical college hospital in Bangladesh. Sixty VLBW neonates (< 1,500 grams weight), 37 males and 23 females, < 72 hours of age were enrolled prospectively from March 2005 to February 2007; 4 babies were excluded. Thirty-four babies were hospital born and 26 home delivered cases admitted postnatally. The mean birth weight and gestational age of the newborns were 1270 ± 169 grams and 30.9 ± 2.9 weeks respectively. Forty-one of 60 cases (68.3%) mothers received at least one antenatal care visit. Common clinical presentations were prematurity alone (36.7%) and its complications like delayed crying (25.0%), feeding problem (23.3%), lethargy (16.7%), hypothermia (10.0%) and respiratory problem (8.3%). The commonest morbidity during hospital stay was neonatal hyperbilirubinemia requiring phototherapy (26.7%), apnoea of prematurity (15.0%), and septicaemia (11.7%). The overall survival rate was 56.7%; most of the deceased cases were those < 1250 grams (15/28, 53.6%) and < 30 weeks of gestation (17/30, 56.7%). No infant with a birth weight < 850 grams or a gestational age < 28 weeks survived. The most common cause of death was birth asphyxia (38.5%), followed by extreme prematurity (26.9%), and septicaemia (19.2%). Very low birth weight infants had relatively higher survival rates probably due to low infection rate. DOI: 10.3329/jbcps.v26i3.4196 J Bangladesh Coll Phys Surg 2008; 26: 128-134