Abstract

A Prospective Comparative Study of Umbilical Cord Blood Culture Versus Peripheral Venous Blood Culture in Diagnosis of Early Onset Neonatal Sepsis in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Tertiary Care Hospital

Pratyush Jain* and Mehul Gosai

Background: Neonatal sepsis is a major cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Blood culture and sensitivity is gold standard for the diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. Low sensitivity of blood culture especially in newborn is due to small volume of blood sample collected from neonates and antibiotics given before sampling. The aim was to evaluate the use of umbilical cord blood culture in the diagnosis of early onset neonatal sepsis as compared to Peripheral vein blood culture.

Aims and Objective: To compare the sensitivity and specificity of umbilical cord blood culture and peripheral vein blood culture in diagnosis of early onset neonatal sepsis. also, to compare the organisms identified by umbilical cord blood culture and venous blood culture.

Research methodology: A prospective, analytical, cross sectional study where comparison of umbilical cord blood culture and peripheral venous blood culture was done in 100 inborn neonates who fulfilled the inclusion exclusion criteria. Sensitivity and specificity, positive and negative predictive values were calculated. The results were evaluated and comparison of two methods was done. P value was calculated, Chi Square test was applied and association was quantified.

Discussion and Conclusion: The association between both methods was found to be significant in our study. The higher sensitivity (81.0%) and accuracy (87%) for predicting disease outcome of patients by UCBC method against PVBC Method conclude that UCBC can be used as reliable and alternate tool to predict the final outcome. Similarly, the high specificity of 88.6% and moderate NPV of 94.59% shows a higher diagnosis capacity of negative outcome by UCBC method as compared to gold standard PVBC method.

Published Date: 2021-04-15; Received Date: 2021-03-02