Risk factors affecting case fatality rate of respiratory distress syndrome.

Abstract

A study of the case fatality rate (CFR) for respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) was conducted on 174 admissions to the Neonatal Special Care Unit at Yale Medical School in the United States. In most reports, mortality rate (MR) has been employed as a measure to predict the prognosis of RDS or/and evaluate the involving risk factors of the disease. For this purpose CFR seems a more practical index. The different implications between MR and CFR will be discussed. The risk factors such as sex, race and gestational age were reviewed. It was found that boys were not more vulnerable than girls, which differs with the traditional concept that boys are more susceptible to RDS. More importantly, RDS was apparently no longer a fatal disease when patients were born later than at 32 gestational weeks. Nine major complications relating to death in RDS patients were ranked according to the prognosis of the disease. Additionally, our study suggested that the recent advance of medical technology was likely to delay the death of RDS patients.