ABSTRACT
Background: TTN is one of the most important causes of respiratory distress in the neonates, mostly it is a benign and self-limited condition but there is rare incidence of developing severe respiratory distress which denotes that the neonate had malignant transient tachypnea of newborn.
Objective: This an observational prospective case control study aimed to evaluate the role of platelet mass index (PMI) to predict the severity of Transient tachypnea of the newborn.
Subjects and methods: The study was performed on 100 neonates with evidence of TTN admitted in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) during the first 24 hours of life and divided according to duration of tachypnea into two groups , group A( 50 neonates with duration of tachypnea > 48 hours) and group B (50 neonates with duration of tachypnea ≤ 48 hours).
Results: Platelet mass index (PMI) and platelet counts were significantly lower in the group of neonate with duration of tachypnea > 48 hrs than in the group of neonate with a duration of tachypnea ≤ 48 hrs (p < 0.001 and p < 0.001 respectively). Platelets count and PMI had an excellent discriminative power for predicting tachypnea > 48 hours (AUC, 962 and 0.970 respectively) the optimal cut-point for platelets count was 309.5 x 103 which produced sensitivity and specificity of 90.0%. While the optimal cut-point for PMI was 2395.25 fl/nl yielding sensitivity of 94.0% and specificity of 88.0%.
Conclusion: Lower PMI and lower platelet count are associated with longer duration of tachypnea in patients with TTN.