Wajiha Rizwan, Natasha Bushra, Ayesha Saif, Humaira Durrani, Saba Ilyas Malik, Shabana Khokhar, Shahnaz Kouser.
Short Interpregnancy Interval and its Effects on Birth Weight, a caseControl study at a Teaching Hospital in Pakistan.
Pak J Med Health Sci Jan ;14(2):397-9.

Background: Short interval between pregnancies significantly increases the risk of low birth weight babies. It is a dilemma of developing countries like Pakistan with increasing population and limited number of neonatal care facilities. Aim: To determine whether short time lapse (6-12 months) between two pregnancies can lead to low weight of babies at birth. Methods: A case-control study was conducted at the departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Punjab Rangers Teaching Hospital Lahore. The data was collected from 250 patients (125 in each group) over a period of 6 months i.e. from 01-03-19 to 31-08-19. The variables were evaluated and data was entered in SPSS version 21. Results:In this study, 77(61.6%) in Cases and 84(67.2%) in Controls were between 20-30 years while 48(38.4%) in Cases and 41(32.8%) in Controls were between 31-34 years of age, mean+sd was calculated as 28.34 +- 3.99 in cases and 28.38 +- 3.85 in controls, mean body weight and height was calculated, 58.74 +- 4.21kgs weight in cases and 56.23 +- 3.87kgs in Controls while mean height was calculated as 149.37 +- 5.61cm in Cases and 151.29 +- 5.16cms in Controls, comparison of low birth weight in both groups was done which reveals 34(27.2%) in Cases and 11(8.8%) in Controls, Odds ratio was 3.87 and p value was 0.0003.It showed a significant increase in low weight at the time of birth in cases than controls. Conclusion: Short interval between pregnancies (6-12 months) can significantly lead to low weight of babies at birth which may be controlled by prolonging the interpregnancy interval. This can be achieved by counselling patients for effective contraception during the antenatal period of the current pregnancy.

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