DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i09.027

Pages: 3609-3616

Thrombocytopenia is the most common haematological abnormality in sick newborns occurring in almost one third of NICU admissions. To study the incidence of thrombocytopenia in sick neonates and its relation with various clinical problems of neonates. This observational prospective study was conducted at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a tertiary care centre over one year. 272 sick neonates, irrespective of birth weight and gestational age, were evaluated for thrombocytopenia. Their clinical problems were also evaluated in relation to the thrombocytopenia. Data was analyzed using SPSS version17. Descriptive statistics were given as the mean, standard deviation, and percentage. A χ2-test was used for analysis of qualitative data. A non-parametric test was used for analysis of two independent quantitative variables. The incidence of thrombocytopenia was observed at 35.30 % of the studied sick neonates. Mean age of thrombocytopenic cases was 92.86 [+_143.75] hrs and 61.5% of these cases had early onset thrombocytopenia. The thrombocytopenic cases showed significant association (p<0.05) with factors such as small for gestational age, prematurity, septicemia, perinatal asphyxia and preeclampsia. The mortality was considerably higher in thrombocytopenic sick newborns (p< 0.05) and mortality showed a direct correlation in cases who had septicemia, and were small for gestational age (p< 0.05) .Since every third sick neonate in our study had thrombocytopenia and its related complication which could lead to mortality, we strongly emphasize the need to monitor platelet counts in all sick neonates so as to improve the probabilities of survival.