Isolation guidelines for obstetric patients and newborn infants

Abstract

Available isolation guidelines for use in hospitals have often overlooked the infectious diseases and unique interactions of obstetric patients and their newborn infants. To help fill this void, we present our hospital's isolation policies for obstetric and neonatal patients and guidelines for maternal-infant contact and breast-feeding. These policies represent a multidisciplinary consensus of opinion and available epidemiologic data and have been found useful and practical in a single large teaching hospital. Other institutions should be able to adapt these guidelines to their own patient populations, personnel, and physical facilities.