Background/aim: Children are important assets of a nation, therefore reduction in infant and child mortality is likely the most important objective of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Infant and child mortality rate is regarded as important and sensitive indicators of the health status of a community. It also reflects the general standard of living of the people and effectiveness of interventions for improving maternal and child health in a country.
Aim: The present work was designed to study children mortalities at paediatrics department in Al-Hussein University Hospital, in five years from the 1st of January 2013 till the end of December 2017.
Materials and methods: This study was done in Pediatrics Department at Al-Hussein University Hospital. It's a review of records of children mortalities that happened among inpatients of pediatrics department at Al-Hussein University Hospital from the 1st of January 2013 till the end of December 2017. All deceased cases in pediatrics department in this period were included and cases of neonatal intensive care unit were excluded.
Collected Data were: age, sex, residence, date of entry to hospital, date of death, duration of admission, cause of death and PICU admission. Data were fed to the computer and analyzed using IBM SPSS software package version 20.0.(Armonk, NY: IBM Corp) Qualitative data were described using number and percent. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to verify the normality of distribution Quantitative data were described using range (minimum and maximum), mean, standard deviation and median. Significance of the obtained results was judged at the 5% level. The used tests were 1 - Chi-square test for categorical variables, to compare between different groups. 2 - Monte Carlo Correction for chi-square when more than 20% of the cells have expected count less than 5. 3 -Kruskal Wallis test For abnormally distributed quantitative variables, to compare between more than two studied groups, and Post Hoc (Dunn's multiple comparisons test) for pair wise comparisons.
Results: The number of admitted cases was 10281 in pediatrics department of Al Hussein University Hospital during the time frame of the study, 215 cases of them died. The percentage of moralities over these five years was 2.09%. There were some data missed from 10 files. The missed data were age, weight, cause of death and residence. They were available only in 205 records. But other data (gender, PICU admission or not & duration of hospital stay) were available in all cases i.e. 215 records. As regard to cause of death, respiratory causes represented (21.2%), (GIT and liver) causes (20%), blood diseases (10.7%), neurological causes (9.8%), Multisystem failure (11.7%) CVS problems (3.4%), injuries (4.9%), renal diseases (2.9%) while 15.1% of cases were due to miscellaneous causes. As respect to habitation, 47.3 % were from Cairo, 14.1% were from Giza and 12.7 % were from Kalyoubeya while other 25.9 % were from different governorates. Males (57.7%) were more than females (42.3%) and under-weight for their age were 54.6 % and the normal weight for their age were 45.4 of the contemplated cases. The mortalities as indicated by death age were 63.9% in the first year of life, while 21.5% were from age of 13 – 60 months, so the absolute entirety of mortalities underneath age of 5 years were 85.4% and 14.6% were above age of 5 years. The least number of deaths was in April (6.1%) while greatest in March and October (12.1%), while in general, mortalities were (27 %) in winter, (21.4%) in spring, (22.8%) in summer and (28.8 %) in autumn. The mortalities as indicated by year of death out of 215 perished cases were least at 2013 (16.8 %) and were most extreme at 2015 (26.5%). Only 11.6% of cases were not admitted to PICU while 88.4% were admitted.
Conclusion: The most common diseases associated with mortalities were respiratory diseases (21.2%). The mortalities were minimum at 2013 (16.8 %) and were maximum at 2015 (26.5%). All over the five years most of cases died in autumn. Most of mortalities were in the age group 1-12 months (63.9%). Mortalities from Cairo were (47.3 %) while from Giza (14.1%). (88.4%) of cases were admitted to PICU.