Study of Umbilical Cord Blood Culture in Diagnosis of Early-onset Sepsis Among Newborns with High-risk Factors.

Context: Blood culture is gold standard for diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. Low sensitivity of blood culture is usually due to small volume of blood sample, intrapartum antibiotics, and antibiotics given to newborn before sampling.

Aim: We evaluated use of Umbilical cord blood culture (UCBC) in diagnosis of neonatal sepsis as compared to peripheral venous blood culture.