Association of Maternal Anemia with Low Birth Weight

Abstract

Objective: To determine the frequency of anemia in women who were pregnant and attended a hospital with tertiary care facilities, and to compare the neonates' low-birth-weight frequency, with vs without anemia in pregnant women.
Method: A Descriptive case series study was conducted from 11th December 2021 to 10th June 2022 in Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Services Hospital Lahore. After getting ethical review committee approval with letter reference no: IRB/2022/990/SIMS, venous blood samples of 196 women with singleton pregnancy of gestational age 37-42 weeks were collected to determine hemoglobin, red cell indices and frequency of maternal anemia. Just after delivery, neonatal weight at birth was measured to determine low-
birth-weight frequency.
Results: In this study, 20 to 40 years was the range of age, and mean was 30.61 ± 4.24 years. Patients counted 113 (57.65%) were 31-40 years old. Gestational age had 38.63 ± 1.24 weeks mean while mean parity was 3.24 ± 1.31. Mean height was 157.87 ± 13.25 cm while mean weight was 71.28 ± 7.87 kg. Mean BMI was 29.26 ± 3.44 kg/m2. In this study, frequency of anemia in pregnant women was found in 89 (45.41%) patients. The frequency of LBW was 52.81% in anemic women versus 31.78% in women who did not have anemia.
Conclusion: This study resulted that, pregnant women have quite high anemia frequency and anemic women have high frequency of low-birth-weight neonates as compared to women without anemia.

How to cite: Obed E, Naqvi RB, Tahira F, Walidad S, Tahir Association of Maternal Anemia with Low Birth Weight. Esculapio -
JSIMS 2022;18(03):340-344