Advanced Maternal Age and the Frequency of Pre-Eclampsia - A Single-Center Cross Sectional Study from Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

Pregnancy at advanced maternal age (≥35 years) has become very common worldwide. Pre-eclampsia (PE) is a serious complication of hypertensive pregnancy that is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality to both the mother and foetus/newborn. This research aimed to inspect the prevalence of PE in a single hospital located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and examine the influence of advanced maternal age (≥35 years) on the occurrence of PE in singleton deliveries. MethodsA retrospective study (January 2011 to December 2018) was carried out at King Abdulaziz University Hospital (KAUH), located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Categorical variables were evaluated with χ² test. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) was used to estimate the comparative risk of developing PE (the outcome variable) according to the maternal age (the exposure variable) at the time of pregnancy. ResultsDuring the study period, 3942 singleton deliveries occurred at KAUH. The demographic characteristics (age and PE) of the study population are summarized in Table 1. Overall, there were 2426 deliveries with a maternal age <34 years (61.5%), whereas there were 1516 deliveries with a maternal age ≥35 years (38.5%). Only 167 deliveries had a diagnosis of PE, thus yielding an overall prevalence of 4.2% in this retrospective study. The percentages of PE cases in patients with maternal age <34 years and ≥35 years were 3.7% and 5.1%, respectively. Two-tailed Chi-square test of independence showed that there was a statistical significance between advanced maternal age and occurrence of PE (p=0.02). To examine the comparative risk of developing PE with relation to the maternal age, an OR analysis showed that patients with advanced maternal age (≥35 years) were 1.4 times more likely to develop PE during gestation when compared to patients with <34 years, and this comparative risk was substantial (OR 1.4, 95% CI 1.1-1.9, p=0.03). ConclusionsThe low prevalence of PE (3.9%) in our study was largely in agreement with the published regional and international figures. Advanced maternal age (≥35 years) is a statistically significant factor for developing PE during pregnancy.