Rukhsana Parveen, Mugheera Hussain, Fatima Khalid, Asif Hanif.
Impact of Inter Pregnancy Interval of Less Than 18 Months on Neonatal Birth Weight.
Esculapio J Services Inst Med Sci Jan ;13(4):217-21.

Objective: To find association between low birth weight and short inter-pregnancy interval (< 18 months). Methodology: 150 females planned for full term delivery were taken in this study from department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Shaikh Zayed Hospital Lahore were taken. After taking an informed consent for subjects or attendants, their age, address, contact details, parity and gestational age in weeks were taken. All pregnant females having gestational age > 37 weeks were enrolled and shall be followed till their normal vaginal delivery. Females delivering baby with < 18 months birth interval (as per operational definition) were considered as cases and females delivering baby with >= 18 months interval were considered as controls. Babies' weight were recorded immediately after their birth and were categorized as low birth weight if weight is < 2.5 kg normal if birth weight is >= 2.5 kg. All data were collected by researcher herself of attached proforma. All collected data were entered and analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS) 22. Results: In this study mean age of females having short inter-pregnancy interval (IPI < 18 months) was 27.20 +- 2.93 years and mean age of those who do not had short inter-pregnancy interval (IPI >= 18 months) was 27.77 +- 3.13 years, there was no statistical difference in mean age among both groups, p-value = 0.248. The average birth weight was significantly higher (2.68+-0.35) in females having IPI >= 18 months when compared with females having IPI < 18 months i.e. 2.51 +- 0.428, p-value 0.001. In females with < 18 months of IPI there were 27(36%) low birth weight babies while 48(64%) females delivered normal weight babies. For those who had >= 18 months of IPI there were 14(18.7%) low birth weights and 61(81.3%) babies had normal weight. On applying relative risk we found there were 2.45 times higher chance of low birth weight baby for those who had < 18 months of IPI, with significant difference , p-value = 0.017. Conclusion: We conclude that pregnancy interval of <18 months is a risk factor for low birth weight. Although efforts are being made to educate population on keeping the pregnancy procedures and intervals safe, further implications are needed to be taken in terms of family planning and awareness campaigning.

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