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Published on: July 13, 2014
The relationship between obstetrical outcomes and alcohol use in the year prior to pregnancy
Heather A Flynn1, Deborah Berman, Sheila M Marcus
1Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108, USA. hflynn@umich.edu
Objectives:
The purpose of this study was to examine problems related to alcohol use as reported covering the year prior to pregnancy in a general prenatal care seeking sample. The relationship of alcohol use to a number of pregnancy and birth complications (premature rupture of membrane, birthweight, weeks gestation and APGAR) was examined.
Methods:
A total of 940 prenatal care-seeking women completed the TWEAK, a brief measure of alcohol use problems during the previous year. Measures were completed by women at an average of 25 weeks gestation (SD = 9.7) in the waiting areas of university-affiliated obstetrics clinics in the US. Pregnancy and birth complications were gathered via medical record search and completed on all cases.
Results:
Controlling for cigarette use and key demographic variables, only pre-pregnancy elevated TWEAK (> or =2) was significantly and consistently related to each obstetrical outcome in multivariate analyses in the total sample. Analyses showed that pre-pregnancy TWEAK was related to PROM and lower birthweight among the sample of women (n = 800) who reported no actual alcohol use during pregnancy.
Conclusions:
Results suggest that a brief screening for alcohol use problems may detect women either in early pregnancy or pre-conceptually, that may be at risk for potentially harmful pregnancy and birth outcomes, including women who deny prenatal alcohol use.
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