Abstract :
Introduction: High risk pregnancy refers to pregnancy with an increased risk of adverse outcome in mother or the baby. Scoring the risk, will identify mothers at risk earlier, so that proper resource allocation, planned management or timely referral to higher centers is facilitated and thereby perinatal mortality or morbidity can be reduced.
Methods: 200 pregnant women with term gestation, admitted to labour room were evaluated. The risk factors in each case were assessed and their individual risk scores were determined using a simple scoring system. Subsequently their perinatal outcomes were compared to their respective risk scores.
Results: It was found that there was a significant association between poor perinatal outcome and high risk pregnancies predicted by this scoring schedule. 20% of the cases belonged to high risk group, out of which 32.5% cases had maternal complications. Significant association between high risk score and perinatal mortality and birth asphyxia was found.
Conclusions: There was a significant correlation between high risk and poor perinatal outcome. So a simple scoring system, such as the one used in our study, can be adopted at primary and rural health centers as a screening tool to predict pregnancies at high risk for poor perinatal outcome. Thereby facilitating early referral of these women to tertiary care centres.
Keyword :
High risk pregnancy, Risk score, Perinatal mortality, Birth asphyxia, Low birth weight