Travel in pregnancy: pregnant women's experiences and knowledge of health issues

Long-distance travel is becoming increasingly common, and there are few evidence-based recommendations for pregnant women in this area. We aimed to investigate our patients in the third trimester to establish how common foreign travel was, how much knowledge they had, and where they had obtained information.

We performed a questionnaire survey of our patients in the third trimester in 2001 at the time of a routine ultrasound scan. All women booked to deliver in our unit were included.

We received 138 out of a possible 151 replies, and over half had traveled abroad in this pregnancy. Over a third of the trips were outside Europe. Over a third of the women traveled without sufficient insurance. Only a third sought advice prior to travel, and the commonest people consulted were their general practitioner and midwife. In general, knowledge on the subject was good, and was better among those who traveled. However, a third of the total group, and a quarter of those who traveled, did not know that air travel increased the risk of venous thromboembolism.

Long-distance travel is common in pregnancy, and women are not always adequately prepared in terms of insurance and travel advice. More studies are required to provide evidence-based guidelines for this increasingly large proportion of women.