Abstract

Introduction Neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (NRDS) is one of the most common respiratory diseases in preterm infants. Evaluation tests have a major role in determining the need for surfactant in preterm infants. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of gastric aspirate shake test (GAST) on predicting surfactant need in infants. This prospective, cross-sectional study was performed on 91 infants with gestational age less than 34 weeks in the neonatal unit of a teaching hospital in Zabol, southern Iran, from 1 February 2019 to 30 July 2019. The infants were selected through convenient sampling. The sampling method used was easy and data were collected using an oral interview with pregnant mothers and through the examination of records and completion of questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using SPSS v21 and descriptive statistics and regression test were used for odds ratio. Materials and methods This prospective, cross-sectional study was performed on 91 infants with gestational age less than 34 weeks in the neonatal unit of a teaching hospital in Zabol, southern Iran, from 1 February 2019 to 30 July 2019. The infants were selected through convenient sampling. The sampling method used was easy and data were collected using an oral interview with pregnant mothers and through the examination of records and completion of questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using SPSS v21 and descriptive statistics and regression test were used for odds ratio. Results 91 infants were included in this study, 62 were male (68.1) and 29 (31.9) were female. The mean birth weight of infants was 1662 +/- 593 g and their mean age was 31.7 +/- 2.5 weeks. The sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, and positive predictive value in the gastric aspirate shake test (GAST) were 100, 40.7, 100, and 48.6, respectively. According to the present study, there was no significant relationship between the type of delivery and hyaline membrane disease (P > 0.05). Conclusion Our study showed that the children of mothers with hypertension, addiction, and diabetes were less likely than others to have hyaline membrane disease and need surfactant administration. The administration of corticosteroid drugs to mothers is also associated with the occurrence of hyaline membrane disease.