Neonatal World Conference 2026

Abstract

Background:

 Although the recognition of clinical stability was considered as an early outcome in patients with pneumonia, there is no literature on time to clinical stability among pediatric patients in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the time to clinical stability among pediatric patients with severe in Southwest Ethiopia.

Methods:

Institution-based prospective follow-up study was conducted among 422 pediatric patients with severe pneumonia at a public hospital from June 2022 to November 30, 2022. A systematic sampling technique was used to select the participants.  Data were entered into Epi-data 4.4.2.1 and exported to STATA 17 for cleaning and analysis respectively. The proportional hazard model and Kaplan-Meier survival estimate graph were used to determine the time to clinical stability.

Results:

 In this study, Children were followed for 2718 person-day observations, with an incidence rate of 13.50% clinical stability per 100 person-day observations. The overall median time to clinical stability was five days, and approximately 86.97 % of pediatric patients with severe pneumonia were clinically stable. Temperature was the most common abnormal parameter and low levels of oxygen saturation had a longer time to achieve clinical stability.

Conclusion:

In this study, most pediatric patients with severe pneumonia were clinically stable during the follow-up period. The combined median time to clinical stability was five days, which was longer than other study findings. Therefore, future research might be required to determine the predictors of prolonged time to clinical stability. Therefore, Stakeholders should work hard to reduce the time clinical stability for pediatric patients.