ABSTRACT
Background and aims: Pregnancy is associated with several hormonal and mechanical changes in the body. The tropical infections that most commonly affect pregnant females are malaria, dengue, leptospirosis and typhoid. These tropical infections cause many medical complications in pregnancy by causing anemia, thrombocytopenia, bleeding and inflammatory reactions. Therefore, we conducted a study to evaluate the clinical presentation, complications and outcome of tropical infections in pregnancy. Material and methods: The present study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital in Mumbai, Maharashtra over a period of 1½ year (January 2018 to June 2019) after getting approval from Institutional Ethics Committee. In this study, 250 pregnant patients admitted in medicine ward, obstetrics and gynecology ward, and ICU with symptoms and signs of tropical infections and age more than 18 years, who gave written informed consent, were included. Results: The most common age group amongst the study population was 20 to 24 years (41.6%), followed by 25 to 29 years (40%) and 30 to 35 years (18.4%). Most of the study population had gestational age of 1 to 12 weeks (61.6%), followed by 13 to 28 weeks (31.6%) and more than 28 weeks (6.8%). Most of the study population had parity 2 (46.8%), followed by parity 1 (43.2%), parity 3 (6.8%) and parity 4 (3.2%). The most common clinical features amongst the study population was fever (62%), followed by headache (32.8%), nausea (30.8%), pain in abdomen (26.4%) and petechiae (26%). The most common infections amongst the study population were malaria (11.2%), dengue (8%), leptospirosis (6%) and enteric fever (5.2%). The most common medical complications were bleeding due to thrombocytopenia (TCP) (6.8%), followed by serositis (5.2%), ARDS (4.4%), meningitis (2.8%), subconjunctival hemorrhage (2.8%) and encephalitis (1.4%). Complicated infections were seen in 30% of the study population. Conclusion: All pregnant women must be evaluated at primary care centers properly in their antenatal visits for their parity status and any associated risk factors and diseases. By doing this, we can reduce many tropical infections, complications and maternal mortality in early stage of pregnancy.