Women Pregnant with Multiples Are at Greater Risk
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Contributed by Ron Gara| 02 December, 2004 06:25 GMT
Mothers need to be better informed to cope with the increased risk associated with twin or multiple gestation pregnancies.
Pregnancies involving twins, triplets and quadruplets are on the rise due to the increase in fertility treatments for women choosing to give birth at a later age. Recent research suggests that an unanticipated effect of the trend is greater risk of complications for the women who undertake these more challenging pregnancies.
While studies have been conducted to determine the impact on babies, mothers have heretofore been largely ignored. Struck by the lack of such vital information, Dr. Mark Walker, an associate scientist in the Obstetrics and Maternal Investigations Program at the OHRI (the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital and a major partner of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa) set out to find the data on is own. His conclusions evoke some concern.
Greater Risk of Adverse Maternal Outcomes
By extracting all records contained in the Discharge Abstract Database collected by the Canadian Institute of Health Information for obstetric deliveries in Canada (except Quebec) from 1984 to 2000, Dr. Walker has determined that multi-fetal pregnancies increase the risk of adverse outcomes for mothers. (Quebec was not included in the study as they collected information through a separate system which was not accessible via CIHI. Researchers on this study only had access to CIHI data.)
The report, which was published in BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, notes that heart attacks are almost 4 times more common in women who have multi-fetal pregnancies; heart failure is almost 13 times more common; and venous thrombolysis -- a blood clot disorder -- is 2 |
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