Ammara Hameed, Sara Fatima, Maryam Haider, Saadia Karim.
Common Causes of Mortality in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of a Tertiary Care Hospital in Karachi.
Pak Paed J Jan ;45(1):84-91.

Objective: To determine the frequency of common causes of death in infants and children admitted to Pediatric ICU in a tertiary care hospital. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Study was conducted in Pediatric ICU at Civil Hospital, Karachi from 23-May 2017 to 23-Nov-2017. Material and Methods: Patients aged between 1 month to 12 years of age, of either gender who were admitted in PICU and died during hospital stay were enrolled. Data including patient`s age,weight, gender, date of admission, date of expiry and duration of hospital stay before death, diagnosis and nutritional status were recorded. Results: Mean age was 6.54 � 3.2 years, 196 (64.9%) were male, mean weight of the participants was 13.58 � 16.2 kg, 143 (47.3%) mothers and 151 (50%) fathers of enrolled participants were illiterate, 153 (50.6%) participants were vaccinated, and mean duration of hospital stay was 4.32�2.1 days. Most common cause of mortality was sepsis (53%) followed by gastroenteritis (12.2%) and pneumonia (11%). Least common cause was malignancy (1.3%). Conclusions: Infectious diseases are still leading cause of childhood deaths in our target population. Low level of parental education and low income are directly related to infectious causes of child mortality.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com