The most common risk factor of death of infants admitted to the NICU: A Brief Review

Introduction: The infant mortality rate is considered as a standard and important indicator of health and socialdevelopment, and without a doubt, the first step towards reducing the infant mortality rate and improving thelevel of this index is to identify the causes of its mortality. Therefore, the present study is conducted with theaim of identifying the causes of death of infants hospitalized in the NICU.Methods: In this review study that was conducted in ۲۰۲۳, three world scientific databases, including ISI,PubMed and Scopus, were reviewed using the keywords of "Babies", "Death" and "NICU". The inclusioncriteria were included the availability of the article and having a Latin text, and the exclusion criteria wasincluded articles published in congresses. At first, ۱۲۶ articles were retrieved, after applying the inclusioncriteria and checking the title and abstract of the articles, finally ۱۴ articles were reviewed to collect information.Results: The review of various studies has shown that the most important causes of infant mortality areprematurity, congenital anomalies, and respiratory disorders, and also the review of more studies shows thatthere is a significant relationship between the time of birth, gestational age and the weight of the baby at birth.Other studies have shown that the birth weight of infants who died was low, and the frequency of infant deathwas significantly higher at lower birth weights. It has also been shown that mortality is higher in infants bornprematurely due to severe prematurity and respiratory distress syndrome. Also, hyaline membrane disease isone of the respiratory diseases in premature babies, which is caused by the lack of surfactant and leads to theirdeath. In the later stages, congenital heart diseases and sepsis were stated as the most common causes of death.Conclusion: The results of this study show that prematurity and low birth weight (LBW) are the most importantdeterminants of infant mortality, and the most common causes of infant mortality are hyaline membrane diseaseand sepsis. Therefore, by increasing the quality of prenatal care, changing the social situation and implementingeducational programs for high-risk groups, we can play an effective role in preventing the birth of prematurebabies with low birth weight. Also, equipping the NICU in terms of treatment facilities and personnel can beeffective in reducing the mortality rate of hospitalized infants, and sepsis diagnostic tests in late-term infantscan also be helpful.

کلیدواژه ها:

Babies ، Death ، NICU