Evaluation of Universal Antenatal Screening for Group B Streptococcus

Background Group B streptococcal disease is one of the most common infections in the first week after birth. In 2002, national guidelines recommended universal late antenatal screening of pregnant women for colonization with group B streptococcus to identify candidates for intrapartum chemoprophylaxis. Methods We evaluated the implementation of the guidelines in a multistate, retrospective cohort selected from the Active Bacterial Core surveillance, a 10-state, population-based system that monitors invasive group B streptococcal disease. We abstracted data from the labor and delivery records of a stratified random sample of live births and of all cases in which the newborn had early-onset group B streptococcal disease (i.e., disease in infants <7 days of age) in 2003 and 2004. We compared our results with those from a study with a similar design that evaluated screening practices in 1998 and 1999. Results We abstracted records of 254 births in which the infant had group B streptococcal disease and 7437 bi...