MEDICAL AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF TEENAGE PREGNANCY

Revista Romana de PEDIATRIE | Volumul LXIV, Nr. 4, An 2015

ISSN 1454-0398 | e-ISSN 2069-6175
ISSN-L 1454-0398
DOI: 10.37897/RJP

National Awards “Science and Research”

NEW! RJP has announced the annually National Award for "Science and Research" for the best scientific articles published throughout the year in the official journal.

ICMJE- Recommendations

Read the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals.

Promoting Global Health

The published medical research literature is a global public good. Medical journal editors have a social responsibility to promote global health by publishing, whenever possible, research that furthers health worldwide.

Marioara Boia, E.S. Boia, Daniela Cioboata and Aniko Manea

ABSTRACT

Pregnancy in adolescence is a special situation, especially among teenagers who do not benefit from family support, being at risk of not receiving adequate prenatal care during pregnancy, of having complications during pregnancy and birth for the mother and especially for the newborn.

Aim. The purpose of this paper is to present the pathology and complications associated to the newborn of teenage mothers.

Material and method. Retrospective study of patients hospitalized during January 2013 – December 2014, the study inclusion criteria being maternal age up to 17 years.

Results. 66.67% of the newborn in the study were preterm babies and 33.33% were newborn at term. Postpartum complications were more frequent and severe in the preterm newborns versus the newborn at term group. Correlating data about pathology, gestational age and birth weight with biological age of the mother reveals that mothers aged 13-15 years gave birth mostly to premature newborn as opposed to mothers aged 16 to 17 years. Mothers of preterm newborn that had extremely low and low birth weight were aged between 13-15 years.

Conclusions. Pregnancy in adolescence is associated most frequently with giving birth to preterm newborn. The lower the biological age of the mother is, the higher the risk of a premature birth, the more severe complications being associated with lower gestational age and lower birth weight of the premature baby.

Keywords: prematurity, pregnancy in adolescence, teenage mothers

Full text | PDF