Usefulness of neonatal pulse oximetry in early detection of cyanotic congenital heart disease at the Moi Teaching And Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya

Abstract

Objective: To determine the usefulness of neonatal pulse oximetry in early detection of cyanotic congenital heart disease at the maternity and newborn unit of the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya.

Setting: Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya, from July 2023 to November 2023.

Study Design: Hospital based cross sectional study.

Subjects: Five hundred and fifty-six newborns at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Interventions: Eligible study participants had their socio-demographic and clinical characteristics taken and recorded. They then underwent pulse oximetry screening and were grouped as either screen positive or screen negative. All participants screened were subjected to gold standard echocardiography imaging study and were grouped as either disease present or disease absent for cyanotic congenital heart disease. Data was analyzed using STATA version 16.

Main outcome measure: Sensitivity, specificity and the predictive values of neonatal pulse oximetry in detection of cyanotic congenital heart disease.

Results: Out of the 556 newborns screened, a test positive rate of 0.72% (4) was established with a true positive rate of 0.18% (1)

All newborns who screened negative (552) did not have cyanotic congenital heart disease. The sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value and positive predictive value were 100%, 99.5%, 100% and 25% respectively.

Conclusion: Neonatal pulse oximetry has high sensitivity, specificity and negative Predictive value for early detection of cyanotic congenital heart disease.