Early teenage obstetrics at Waikato Hospital

New Zealand has the second highest published teenage pregnancy rate in the world. Different papers have shown adverse obstetric outcome for teenage mothers. The aim of this study was to compare the obstetric parameters, such as birth weight, gestation at birth, Apgar scores, breech delivery, caesarean sections, instrumental deliveries, incidences of birth defects, twins, and gestational hypertension/pre-eclampsia of early teenage mothers with the rest of the population. The data were obtained from the perinatal information management system (PIMS) at Waikato Hospital for the period 1994 to 1996. The data were statistically analysed. There were 306 women in the early teenage group (17 years and younger) and 206 randomly selected women in the control group who were 18 years or older. In the early teen group more than 92% of women were primiparous, whereas in the control group most women were multiparous. The analyses detected no differences in the two groups in the parameters studied except increased incidence of ventouse delivery in the early teenage group (P = 0.004). This was surprising because, older and parous women are supposed to have better outcomes. Hence there was no evidence from this study of any of obstetric risk factors associated with early teenage pregnancy. Also, race did not affect the means of birth weights, gestational age at birth and Apgar scores. Adjustment for race and parity differences did not change the conclusions apart from making the difference in incidence of ventouse delivery less significant (P = 0.067 when adjusted for parity differences).