Causes of Death in Neonates and Children in 17-Shahrivar Training Hospital of Rasht

Abstract Identifying the exact causes of infant mortality in developing countries is very important. Infants’ mortality rate is a useful indicator for assessing the quality of health care in community. To detect the relative frequency of neonates and children’s mortality causes in 17 Shahrivar Training Hospital of Rasht, from Jun 2009 to Sep 2010 This was a cross sectional – descriptive study. The only exclusion criterion of the study was incomplete required information in the records. We designed a questionnaire which consisted of questions on age, gender, weight, living place, past medical history, the time between disease and hospitalization, diagnosis, positive culture and the cause of death. Having gathered the data, we used SPSS 16 software and chi-square test to analyze and compare the major causes of mortality and morbidity in the above-mentioned hospital. Data on 216 died patients were enrolled in the study. Their mean age was 3 years (minimum 1 month and maximum 7 years) and 133 (61.6%) of the cases were male and 83 (38.4%) were female. The main causes of mortality in this study were: pneumonia, respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis and liver failure. The causes of death among different age groups showed a significant difference (Chi-Square test, P.value<0.01). The leading causes of death in infants were respiratory distress syndrome (30.1%), pneumonia (20.3%), sepsis (14%) and prematurity (9.1%), and in children were pneumonia (26.3%), liver failure (17.7%), malignancy (12.5%) and sepsis (8.8%). With increase in our knowledge about prevalence and causes of death of diseases and related risk factors, we can have better planning to improve the quality of health and decrease mortality rate in our country.