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Background & Aims: Bacterial infections in hospitals are one of the most common causes of death in neonates admitted to the intensive care units. In order to control and prevent these infections in neonates admitted to intensive care unit, it is not possible to know the prevalence of these infections. The purpose of this systematic review and meta–analysis was to estimate the prevalence of bacterial infections in neonatal intensive care units.
Materials & Methods: A systematic review of the literature for related articles was conducted in SID, Mag Iran, PubMed, Scopus, Science direct, and Google Scholar databases up to November 2019. The articles were limited to the English and Persian languages. In order to increase the sensitivity of the search, the reference lists of studies that entered the final phase was manually scanned. The quality of the studies was evaluated with the STROBE. Meta-analysis of data was performed using CMA version 2 software.
Results: 14 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Since the studies were not homogeneous enough, the random-effects modeling method was used. The meta-analysis findings showed that the prevalence of bacterial infections in the neonatal intensive care unit was 10.3% C.I = (0.078,0.135).
Conclusion: The meta-analysis results showed that the prevalence of nosocomial bacterial infections in neonatal intensive care units is 10%.