Morbidity features in newborns born with extremely low and very low body wight and left without parental care

ABSTRACT

Mothers increasingly mention poor health of the newborn child as the reason for abandoning the child. One of the factors causing the unsatisfactory state of the child's health is the child's premature birth, a little or long before the due date. According to the data of most developed countries of the world, from 5% to 10% of children in the general population are born prematurely. In the Russian Federation, these premature births amount for around 75% of infant mortality. Moreover, the most vulnerable ones among premature infants are children with extremely low and very low body weight. In this regard, the goal of the study has been formulated to assess the state of health of the children born with very low and extremely low body weight and left without parental care. Material and Methods. For this, a retrospective analysis of the labor and delivery records has been conducted for 182 newborns abandoned by mothers in maternity hospitals in the Chelyabinsk region in the period from 2012 to 2017. Results and discussion. Over the study period, the average proportion of newborns with low and extremely low body weight was as follows 12.1% in the big urban center, 12.0% in urban districts and 12.7% in rural municipalities of the total number of early social orphans. The proportion of newborns with very low body weight was 69.0%; 31.0% had extremely low body weight. The smallest of the examined infants was a newborn with a birth weight of 840 grams. It was found that children born with extremely low and very low body weight had from two to three pathologies already at birth. Conclusion. The identified risk factors for the birth of premature babies are the following extragenital diseases of the mother, complicated obstetric and gynecological history, infectious diseases of the mother. A high proportion of newborns with very low and extremely low body weight (12.0-12.7%) among abandoned children indicates that the latter are at risk for this pathology.