It is recognized that
prenatal care plays an important
role in reducing adverse
birth.
Chinese pregnant women with medical condition were required to seek additional
health care based on the recommended at least 5 times
health care visits.This study was to estimate the
association between
prenatal care utilization (PCU) and
preterm birth (PTB),and to investigate if medical conditions during
pregnancy modified the
association.This
population-based
case control study sampled
women with PTB as cases;one control for each case was randomly selected from
women with
term births.The
Electronic Perinatal
Health Care Information System (EPHCIS) and a
questionnaire were used for
data collection.The PCU was measured by a renewed
Prenatal Care Utilization (APNCU) index.
Logistic regression models were used to estimate
odds ratios (OR) and the 95%
confidence interval (95% CI).Totally,2393
women with PTBs and 4263
women with
term births were collected.In this study,695 (10.5%)
women experienced inadequate
prenatal care,and 5131 (77.1%) received adequate plus
prenatal care.Inadequate PCU was associated with PTB (adjusted OR1.41,95% CI1.32-1.84);the
similar positive
association was found between adequate plus PCU and PTB.Among
women with medical conditions,these
associations still existed;but among
women without medical conditions,the
association between inadequate PCU and PTB disappeared.Our data suggests that
women receiving inappropriate PCU are at an increased
risk of having PTB,but it does depend on whether the
woman has a medical condition during
pregnancy.