OBJECTIVES Infants are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases due to the major long-term health problems infected mothers can transmit to newborns, i.e. perinatal infection. Some experts say there is insufficient or unreliable data regarding the treatment for infants diagnosed with perinatal infection. Therefore, this study aims to explore a national data set of perinatal infection inpatients for trends that may be useful towards improving the efficiency and quality of prenatal treatment and management. METHODS Provided by the National Inpatient Sample, the study's data consisted of 30,000 infants with and without perinatal infection. It was released in 2007 and reflects a 2005 sample collected from more than 100 hospitals and 38 states. Using the data-analysis software SAS Enterprise Guide, the data were analyzed for significant variables by comparing a treatment and control group through frequencies, densities, summary statistics, logistic regression, and linear regression models. RESULTS Initial analyses reveal the majority of infants diagnosed with perinatal infection are male. There is a higher occurrence of the disease in hispanic and black infants and lower occurrence in whites. The disease is life-threatening and is linked to a longer length of stay and higher total charges. Regression models showed that there are inversely and directly proportional relationships between disease presence and a variety of diagnoses and procedures, some of which can significantly increase a patient's length of stay and total charges. CONCLUSIONS Patient descriptors such as race and gender can affect the presence of perinatal infection, and certain common additional diagnoses and procedures associated with the disease can significantly prolong a patient's length of stay and increase total charges. Applying these results to perinatal infection research, there should be more focus on these factors in order to improve the efficiency and quality of perinatal infection treatment and management.