Research Information System
Cocuk Sagligi ve Hastaliklari Dergisi, vol.56, no.3, pp.105-121, 2013 (Scopus)
In this study, we aimed to investigate the causes of infant mortality and the reliability and credibility of the Infant Mortality Monitoring System, which was founded five years ago by the Ministry of Health, Public Health Agency, Department of Child and Adolescent Health. The main, intermediate and final causes of infant mortality, which were defined by the Local City Commissions and the Infant Mortality Study Group, were compared in order to define the correlation between the two groups. For this, 2046 cases were selected to cover nearly all cities in Turkey, from 2008. In all cases, hospital files and all medical documents were investigated by the Study Group. According to the time of death, 1157 (56.5%) were early neonatal deaths and 399 (19.5%) were late neonatal deaths, leading to 1556 (76.1%) neonatal deaths; 490 (23.9%) were postneonatal deaths. According to the classification of the Local City Commissions and the Infant Mortality Study Group, the main causes of mortality were prematurity (42.8% and 45.0%, respectively), intermediate causes of mortality were prematurity and respiratory distress syndrome (12.0% and 17.3%, respectively), and the final causes of mortality were respiratory distress syndrome (24.8% and 27.2%, respectively). The correlation rates between the mortality causes of the Local City Commissions and the Infant Mortality Study Group were highest (76.4%) in the main causes of death, while correlation was less with respect to the intermediate and final causes of death (34.3% and 56.8%, respectively). In Turkey, current infant mortality seems to originate greatly from neonatal mortality, which is mainly caused by prematurity and its complications. In order to achieve a further decline in the infant mortality rate, preterm births should be decreased or prevented in the future. In addition, in order to optimize the Infant Mortality Monitoring System and to decrease interobserver discrepancies between the diagnoses, a new list of systematic causes of deaths should be available.