Association between duration of neonatal hospital stay and morbidity in the first month of life.

The morbidity of 506 healthy full-term newborns was studied in the first month of life in relation to the time they stayed in the hospital. The average time for the newborns who were born by vaginal delivery was 73.3+/-11.7 hours, while for those who were born by cesarean section it was 135+31.5 hours. Thirty-seven newborns presented health problems during the neonatal period (7.3%) and only 2% needed hospital readmission. The commonest problem in the newborns we studied was jaundice which appeared from the fourth to sixth day of life. During the second fortnight the commonest problems were infections of the respiratory tract. From the results of our study it is obvious that only a small percentage of readmissions could have been avoided if the original stay in hospital had been prolonged.