Etiology of Early Neonatal Death, An Implication for Intervention

Neonatal mortality is accounted for significant percentage of under 5 year old mortality rate. In spite of decline in child mortality rate and with huge progress in the field of neonatal medicine, neonatal and specially early neonatal death are one of the important causes of infant mortality rate so evaluating the causes of neonatal death and specially early neonatal death is very important in every geographic area .Therefore we decided to evaluate the early neonatal mortality rate and find out their etiologies in one of the referral hospital in Tehran. This is a retrospective and descriptive study which had been done In neonatal ward and neonatal intensive care unit of Shariati hospital during 8 years. All neonates who were born in this time period and expired within first week of life were evaluated for causes and time of death .registered information were analyzed. 2050 neonates were born and 189 early neonatal death were recorded. More than half of dead neonates were under 2500 gram weight at birth and the most prevalent cause of death were respiratory diseases and then congenital anomalies. Because the most important cause of early neonatal death was low birth weight, maternal support during pregnancy and appropriate monitoring of fetal weight and health play an important role in declining neonatal mortality .Proper intervention for treatment of neonatal respiratory diseases will decrease neonatal death.