Background: Blood transfusion is a relatively common practice in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Regarding that few studies have been conducted on infants in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), this study was investigated the frequency of blood components usage for preterm infants in NICU.
Materials and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study and was conducted on all neonates admitted to NICU of Shahid Sadoughi hospital. Information such as gestational age, sex, birth weight, and cause of hospitalization, number of injections, transfusion information, newborn status and delivery type were extracted from medical records. Chi-square test was used for the analysis of data. Statistically, P-value< 0.05 was assumed significant.
Results: In study, 44.6 % of patients were hospitalized due to prematurity and 19.5% due to respiratory distress syndrome. Among 816 NICU admissions, 370 (45.3%) received one or more blood components during their hospital stay, 61.6% received one, 26.2% two and 12% received three or four types of blood components. In total, 1719 blood components were requested in NICU. Of these, 21.5% were not used. The most frequent blood components used for neonates were fresh frozen plasma (FFP) (60%), leukoreduced red blood cells (RBCs) (26.5%) and platelet units (9.2%). Moreover, there was significant difference between the frequency using of blood components in terms of gestational age (p=0.001), birth weight (p=0.001), type of delivery (p=0.04), ABO blood group (p=0.001) and mortality (p=0.001).
Conclusion: The demand for blood components in NICU was high and one-fifth of requested blood was not used. Considering the high blood component usage, it is necessary to investigate the appropriateness of demands and transfusion of blood components in NICU. In addition, parameters including gestational age, birth weight and, type of delivery were related to the frequency of using blood components in NICU.