Prevalence and treatment of persistent pulmonary hypertension in the newborn in a Mexican pediatric hospital.

Persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn is defined as the failure of the normal circulatory transition that occurs after birth. It is a syndrome characterized by marked pulmonary hypertension that causes hypoxemia and right-to-left extra-pulmonary shunting of blood. In the treatment of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn, the goal is to increase oxygen flow to the baby's organs to prevent serious health problems. Treatment may include medication, mechanical ventilation and respiratory therapy. We performed a retrospective, descriptive and transversal study to investigate the prevalence and treatment of neonatal patients with persistent pulmonary hypertension who were admitted at the Hospital del Niño DIF from 2004 to 2008. Data, collected from hospital charts, included demographic, clinical course and use of medication. A total of 38 patients were included (prevalence of 5.7%). The average age of patients was 8.4 +/- 1.4 days. The mortality rate was 42.1%. Data were collected and 45 different drugs were given to the pediatric patients. The median number of drugs/inpatient was 8.3 (1-18). The therapeutic class most prescribed was anti-infective (29.9% of all the prescriptions), followed by cardiovascular and renal drugs (26.4% of all the prescriptions) and gastrointestinal agents (14.6% of all the prescriptions). Ranitidine was the drug most commonly used, followed by ampicillin and midazolam. We found a high mortality rate and as in many studies, the therapeutic class most used were anti-infectives.