Abstract

Prematurity and neonatal sepsis account for about 50% of infant mortality in the world today, impacting low-resource countries more negatively, with slow development in strategies to combat sepsis in newborns. The first barrier continues to be the definition of neonatal sepsis, which, given the existence of multiple diagnostic criteria and how imprecise they are, complicates uniformity in clinical research, health care and work management in neonatal units, both in the diagnostic part and in terms of antimicrobial treatment. In addition to the above, there is the non-specificity of the clinical manifestations in neonatal sepsis, mainly in premature newborns, affecting the diagnostic approach and with it empirical antibiotic therapy. Since antimicrobial therapy is the mainstay of treatment, adequate administration times and schedules need to be ensured to improve clinical outcomes in the newborns being cared for.

Keywords

neonatal sepsis, prematurity, empirical antibiotic therapy, antimicrobial resistance, blood culture