Clinical characteristics and epidemiology of sepsis in the neonatal intensive care unit in the era of multi-drug resistant organisms: A retrospective review

Background Sepsis in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) remains one of the most significant causes of morbidity and mortality, especially for preterm newborns. Multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) are emerging as important pathogens that cause neonatal sepsis in NICU. Therefore, studying the epidemiology, clinical features, and outcome caused by MDROs vs. non-MDROs, and identifying risk factors that may predispose patients to sepsis by MDROs are important. Methods Episodes of blood culture-proven sepsis (age: 0–90 days) in the NICU at our institution from January 2012 to December 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Collected data included demographics, signs at time of sepsis, laboratory values, microbiologic results, and final outcome. We compared clinical and laboratory data and final outcome for patients with sepsis due to MDROs vs. non-MDROs. Multivariate analysis was performed on variables with a P value of