Risk assessment in neonatal early onset sepsis.

The incidence of neonatal early onset sepsis has declined with the widespread use of intrapartum antibiotic therapies, yet early onset sepsis remains a potentially fatal condition, particularly among very low birth-weight infants. Clinical signs of neonatal infection are nonspecific and may be absent in the immediate postnatal period. Maternal and infant clinical characteristics, as well as infant laboratory values, have been used to identify newborns at risk and to administer empiric antibiotic therapy to prevent progression to more severe illness. Such approaches result in the evaluation of approximately 15% of asymptomatic term and late preterm infants and of nearly all preterm infants. The development of multivariate predictive models may provide more accurate methods of identifying newborns at highest risk and allow for more limited newborn antibiotic exposures.