Author(s)

Anália Luana Sena de Souza¹, Nilba Lima de Souza², Débora Feitosa de França³, Samara Isabela Maia de Oliveira³, Anne Karoline Candido Araújo³, Dândara Nayara Azevedo Dantas³

¹Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte/UFRN, Natal, Brazil.
²Department of Nursing, Health Science Center, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Central Campus, Natal, Brazil.
³Graduate Program in Nursing, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte/UFRN, Natal, Brazil.

Perinatal asphyxia is defined as harm to the fetus or the newborn caused by hypoxia and/or ischemia of various organs with intensity to produce biochemical and/or functional changes. Understanding the risk factors for this clinical condition allows the identification of vulnerable groups, enabling an improvement in care planning in the perinatal period in neonatal intensive care units. In this sense, this research aimed to identify risk factors for perinatal asphyxia present in newborns term that showed record for this clinical condition. This was a cross-sectional, retrospective documentary, quantitative and descriptive, conducted from data from medical records of 55 infants admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit. As for maternal characteristics (78.0%) had between 16 and 35 years, only one child (53.0%) and (76.0%) had no prior history of miscarriage. As for pre-existing diseases or pregnancy (38.0%) developed by Hypertensive Pregnancy Specific disease (02.0%) were suffering from Hypertension and (02.0%) of Diabetes Mellitus. As for newborns, most infants had birth weight (43.6%) and correlation with gestational age (78.2%) compatible for good conditions of birth. Only (20.0%) of the infants had a difficult labor. It stood out although there was a slight predominance of severe asphyxia (50.9%) in the first minute and (45.5%) of the infants had record release intrauterine meconium. It was concluded that most mothers and newborns did not have risk factors for perinatal asphyxia, thus, this fact could be attributed to the structural conditions of service, especially in the care during labor, delivery and immediate assistance newborn.

Birth at Term, Neonatal Asphyxia, Neonatal Intensive Care Units, Neonatal Nursing

Sena de Souza, A. , de Souza, N. , de França, D. , Maia de Oliveira, S. , Candido Araújo, A. and Azevedo Dantas, D. (2016) Risk Factors for Perinatal Asphyxia in Newborns Delivered at Term. Open Journal of Nursing, 6, 558-564. doi: 10.4236/ojn.2016.67059.