Postoperative characteristics of infants who developed necrotizing enterocolitis with different postnatal ages

Our goal was to investigate the surgical procedures, postoperative complications, and survival with regard to different onset timing of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). We performed a retrospective review of medical records with a diagnosis of NEC between 2005 and 2016. The cutoff was set at 10 days for early onset ≤10 days and late onset over 10 days. Propensity score matching was performed to adjust for any baseline differences. In 53 paired patients, clinical outcomes, including, mortality, postoperative complications, and length of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) stay, were evaluated on the basis of early or late-onset NEC. Successful 1:1 matching propensity score matching was performed with 208 infants. Mortality for early-onset NEC infants was lower than that of early late NEC infants (P = .026). A lower overall postoperative complication rate, including infectious complications [19 (35.8) vs 29 (54.7); odds ratio, 0.462, confidence interval (CI) 0.212–1.008, P = .039], was noted in patients with early-onset NEC compared with infants with late-onset NEC. NICU stay and major complication were marginal different between the 2 groups. Comparison of feeding outcomes revealed that the time to achieve full enteral feeds was significantly longer for those with late-onset NEC (18.1 ± 11.5 vs 26.3 ± 15.6, P = .008). The infants who develop NEC after 10 days of life do influence postoperative outcome survival or other clinically important outcomes after laparotomy.