Early Diagnosis of Neonatal Sepsis using Hematological Scoring System in Resource limited Set Up

Background: Over past two decades neonatal morbidity associated with sepsis has increased due to changing microbial spectrum. To establish early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis is a challenge because of varied clinical presentations. For definite diagnosis of sepsis, culture results are gold standards which are time taking process. The other recent available markers are sensitive but expensive. Hence they have limited use in financially constrained setup. Therefore there is always a need for a cost effective test to detect infection that could be easily performed in our set up. Objective: Present study has been undertaken mainly to detect neonatal sepsis and to emphasis the fact that hematological scoring system of Rod well suggested in 1988 which was based on CBC report should be established as a part of routine protocol for examination in neonates suspicious for sepsis in order to prevent morbidity due to late diagnosis of sepsis. Material and methods: A prospective study was conducted in NICU of district hospital Vidisha (MP) from March 2019 to April 2019. All neonates with clinical suspicion for sepsis were enrolled in the study. A baseline CBC and blood culture were sent. The HSS were analysed according to the HSS of Rod well et al, score of more than 2 out of 7 consider to be indicative of sepsis. Conclusion: Rod well hematological scoring system is a feasible and cost effective method in detecting neonatal sepsis for resource limited set up.