Umbilical cord antiseptics for preventing sepsis and death among newborns - PubMed
3 hours ago
- #chlorhexidine
- #umbilical cord care
- #neonatal sepsis
- Umbilical cord antiseptics may prevent neonatal sepsis and death, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
- Chlorhexidine (CHX) likely reduces omphalitis risk (moderate certainty) and may slightly reduce all-cause neonatal mortality (low certainty) in LMICs, but probably delays cord separation by about 2 days.
- In high-income countries (HICs), evidence for CHX is very uncertain regarding omphalitis prevention and cord separation time.
- Alcohol use in LMICs shows very uncertain effects on omphalitis prevention and cord separation time.
- In HICs, alcohol likely delays cord separation slightly (moderate certainty), but effects on mortality or omphalitis are not reported.
- The review included 18 trials (143,150 participants) and assessed antiseptics like CHX, alcohol, silver sulfadiazine, and povidone iodine.
- Studies had moderate risk of selection/attrition bias, high risk of detection/performance bias, and unclear reporting bias.