Neonatal mortality risk prediction.

Infant and child mortality is a health indicator of society in general, and a significant number of these deaths occurs at Neonatal Intensive Care Units. Efforts aimed at preventing infant and child mortality are effective only if based on reasonably reliable information regarding death-related factors. Information is required on risk factors leading to such outcomes in order to prioritize interventions and plan their development, assess the effectiveness of interventions aimed specifically at risk factors, and observe national and international trends over time.1,2 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4, established by the World Health Organization (WHO), is to reduce child mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015, which accounts for an infant and child mortality rate of 8.5 per 1000 live births.3 Neonatal mortality (<28 days old) is the main component of infant and child mortality (<1 year old) and accounts for approximately 50% of perinatal mortality. Given the progressive and sustained reduction in postnatal mortality (28365 days old), at present most efforts are focused on the perinatal period in order to reach the target of MDG 4. The complexity and high costs related to neonatal and pediatric intensive care have led to a growing interest in developing measures to estimate the patient’s condition severity. Although such scores may help to improve health care quality and reference mortality rates, it is important to fully understand their purpose and factors that influenced the performance of such risk scores so that they can be adequately compared and used more effectively.4 Every year, approximately four million children die in their first four weeks of life, and 99% of these deaths take place in developing countries. This is twice the number of deaths associated to HIV/AIDS.5 In this issue of Argentine Archives of Pediatrics (see page 213), Márquez-González, et al. describe a new neonatal mortality risk prediction scale in Mexico and its subsequent validation. This is an essential contribution and points the pathway to new advances. An additional advantage of these studies is that they allow to draw conclusions on the studied population and the quality of care received (benchmarking). Thus, it is worth noting Neonatal mortality risk prediction