Neonatal respiratory distress in the neonatal intensive care unit at a national referral hospital in the southern province of Rwanda.

Abstract

Background: Throughout the world NRD is a major reason for admissions into neonatal intensive care units. NRD presents in many different ways but the main symptoms are; tachypnea, nasal flaring, chest retractions, and grunting. The complications can lead to serious morbidity and mortality. Despite high neonatal morbidity and mortality due to NRD there has been no studies focusing on NRD in Rwanda.This studydetermined the prevalence, associated risk factors and outcomes of NRD in a selected referral hospital. Methodology:Quantitative descriptive, retrospective, cross- sectional design was used and stratified random sampling method was used to select a sample of 247 patients’ files through the population of all neonates n=683 admitted to the NICU during 2016. An adapted checklist from a Cameroon study was used to collect data and were analyzed by SPSS version 20 and presented using tables and figures. Results: The prevalence rate of NRDwas 60% among the total number of admissions in the NICU. The associated risk factors were prematurity (61%), low birth weight (62.8%), male gender (56%) and Apgar score<7 at 5 min (21%). The main etiologies of NRD identified were neonatal infections (40, 3%), TTN (28%), and RDS (18%).TTN was statistically significant to be associated with NRD with p value .000 and also neonatal infections with a p value .004. Outcomes: 53.1 % of newborns were discharged home and 43.2 % of neonates died. Conclusion and recommendation:It has been found that the prevalence of NRD is high in Rwanda compared to other African countries like in the Cameroon where NRD is high at 47.5%.The deaths of newborns (43.2%) was high demonstrating the serious mortality associates with NRD. These findings point to the need for implementing evidence based practices in prevention and management of NRD.