teenage pregnancy affect obstetric outcomes?

ABSTRACT

The studies concerning teenage pregnancy outcomes are contradictory; some revealed excess risk of poor outcomes and others didn't. In addition, studies in Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, are very deficient The objective of this study was to determine the frequency of teenage pregnancy and to compare the obstetric outcome of teenage pregnant women less than 20 years with that of older [20-29 years]. A retrospective comparative study was carried out in Northern borders province, Saudi Arabia during the period from January, 1, 2005 to December, 31, 2006. We compared the obstetric outcomes of 118 nulliparous women aged less than 20 years [n=118] who had singleton births during the study period, with that of 432 nulliparous women aged 20-29 years who had singleton births during the same period [control group]. Data were collected from family files, maternity cards and hospital files. Appropriate statistical tests were used to compare between the two groups. The incidence of teenage pregnancy was 3.7% of all live births. Both groups were similar regarding maternal education and occupation, and time of start of antenatal care booking and number of antenatal care visits. Antenatal complications like pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, anemia, antepartum hemorrhage and urinary tract infections were similar in study and control groups. Also, the two groups showed no significant difference regarding instrumental vaginal delivery, cesarean section, low birth weight, preterm delivery, posterm delivery, Apgar score at 5 minute and need of newborn babies to admission to neonatal intensive care units. Teenage pregnancy is not associated with bad obstetric outcomes when adequate antenatal care is received