DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2016.v04i08.013

Pages: 671-675

Haemorrhagic Disease of Newborn (HDN), also called vitamin K deficiency bleeding (VKDB), is an acquired coagulopathy secondary to reduction of vitamin K dependent coagulation factors below hemostatic levels. It is a preventable disease with prophylactic administration of vitamin K at birth. Aim of this study was to identify clinical presentations, risk factors and short term outcome of infants with hemolytic disease of newborn. A total of 62 patients with hemorrhagic disease of newborn (aged from birth to 6 month) randomly selected to participate in this cross sectional analytical study. In this study 13% babies presented as early HDN, 35% presented as classical HDN and 51% as late HDN In this study, 87% babies were on exclusive breast feeding. The high incidence of HDN in breast-fed babies is due to its low content of vitamin K. Vitamin k was not given in home delivered babies illustrates that traditional birth attendants are unaware about the importance of administration of vitamin K at birth. The most common presentation of HDN was intracranial haemorrhage noted in 41.9% of cases. In this study, majority of babies (87.09%) recovered and discharged. This shows that HDN has good prognosis when adequately treated and not associated with intracranial haemorrhage.