[Early diagnosis of sepsis in the preterm neonate]. / Diagnosi precoce di sepsi nel neonato pretermine.

The usefulness of the neutrophil blood cell count, the ratio of band forms to total neutrophils, the platelet count, the quantitative determination of serum IgM, C-reactive protein, alpha-1-acid glycoprotein and haptoglobin for the early identification of the serious neonatal infections was evaluated in 70 preterm newborns: 15 with sepsis, 2 with serious infections, 53 without infections. None of these tests has proved sensitive and predictive enough to be used as a single measure. The combination of 2 or more of them had improve the sensitivity (76.4%) and the predictive value of negative test (91.6%). The authors suggest that the greatest potential value of the tests is to exclude infections, with a more than 90% probability, if they are negative.