Causes of Neonatal Sepsis - Health Channel

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Causes of Neonatal Sepsis |

Neonatal sepsis is an infection that babies get from their mothers. Dr. Majd M. Dardas, Neonatal Perinatal Physician with Center for Women and Infants at South Miami Hospital, explains what vertical transmissions are, and how contaminated amniotic fluid gets to the baby and causes infection.

Transcript

So dr. Dardis how do we see this happen so here we’re gonna go back to the definitions of early onset versus late onset so with the early onset sepsis mainly this is an infection that babies get from their mothers and we call this vertical transmission so basically it is contaminated amniotic fluid that ascends to to the baby and causes infection and usually this is because of a leak in the otic fluid so the bacteria from the birth canal of the mother gets into the amniotic fluid around the baby and the baby is bathing in that so it gets to the lungs it gets to the bloodstream and causes infection so this is mainly the the early onset right now the late onset sub says there’s also vertical transmission however it’s the different mechanisms so babies do get the same bugs however they’re colonized with them they don’t cause the infection right away they cause infection later on right so this develops a usually at home at that point mom is home with baby mom and dad are home right and this happens or if the babies had an extended stay in the NICU like a preterm baby or a full-term baby that was a little sick they could still have that at the hospital but a lot of times it’s it’s symptoms that they have at home now the other mechanism that the late onset sepsis could happen is what we call horizontal transmission which is basically from getting the infection from the environment or the caregivers so basically you know babies could get those infections from their surroundings for example if we have a preterm baby in the NICU they are subject to a lot of different procedures that we do like peripheral it’s simple things like a peripheral IV or central line way it affected yes so once you break the skin the bacteria that is usually present on the skin although it is there and doesn’t cause any infection once it gets to the bloodstream it would cause a severe infection you

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