Predictors of length of hospital stay for preterm infants in Ethiopia: a competing risk analysis

BACKGROUND: Length of hospital stay (LOS) is one of the essential indicators for evaluating the efficiency and the quality-of-care service delivered. predicting LOS is critical for resource allocation, decision-making, lowering neonatal morbidity and death, enhancing clinical outcomes and parent counseling. In addition, extended hospital stays (long LOS_NICU) place a burden on the healthcare systems decreasing bed turnover rates as well as their financial stand and the mental stress on families. In Ethiopia, there is limited evidence on the determinant factors that influence on LOS. OBJECTIVES: To determine factors affecting neonatal intensive care unit length of stay for all preterm newborns who were discharged alive. METHOD: The study used a secondary data source, was collected for the Study of Illness in Preterm (SIP) infants project. The research study was a multicenter, cross-sectional, observational clinical study that took place in five Ethiopia hospitals from July 1, 2016, to May 31, 2018. The predictors of LOS were determined using Fine-Gray's competing risk analysis. RESULTS: For this study 3,511 preterm infants admitted to the NICU were analyzed. About 28.8% of the preterm infants died during their time in neonatal care while 66.6% were discharged alive. At the end of the study 4.6% babies were still in the NICU. The overall median LOS (death or discharge) was 7 days, with an interquartile range of 8 days. The cumulative incidence of discharge rose with increasing in gestational age and birth weight, on the contrary, the rate of discharge was decreased by 45.7% with the development of RDS (SDH ratio: 0.543), by 75.9% with the development of apnea (SDH ratio: 0.241), by 36.2% with sepsis, and by 43.6% with pneumonia (SDH ratio: 0.564). CONCLUSIONS: Preterm newborns with a low gestational age and birth weight have a greater probability of having a prolonged LOS. Complications of the medical conditions RDS, apnea, sepsis, pneumonia, anemia, asphyxia, and NEC substantially raise LOS considerably.