Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of antenatal steroid (AS) administration on the early outcome of premature infants.
Method: The data of premature infants with gestational ages ?34 weeks who were admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit between 2008 and 2012 were analysed retrospectively.
Infants with major congenital anomalies and borned out of our hospital our hospital were excluded from the study. According to the application of AS infants were divided into 3 groups: completed cure, incompleted cure and without application. The results of early period mortality and morbidity were compared between the three groups.
Results: During this time period 547 infants were borned. The study was completed with 504 infants because of 17 infants have congenital abnormalities and 26 infants referred to different hospitals. In the first 28 days of life 41 (8.1%) infants died. In our study, AS application were found as 20.8% (n=105) of completed cure, 13.3% (n=67) of the incompleted cure with the total of 34.1%. In the infants who were administered completed cure AS, the mortality ratio, the incidence of proven sepsis and ROP were found low statistically (p values: 0.001, 0.02,

Key words: Antenatal steroid, preterm, outcome, mortality