Screening of high risk pregnancy among mothers attending MCH centers in Alexandria

A cross-sectional study was carried out on a sample of 900 pregnant women attending MCH centers in Alexandria to determine the incidence of high risk pregnancy and to demonstrate the common risk factors among them. The simplified scoring system developed by Morrison and Olsen (1979) was used. Mothers with scores 0-2 were considered at low risk those with score 3 and more were categorised as high risk. Results revealed that high risk women constituted 27.78% of the sample. Twenty three risk factors were identified among all pregnant women screened. The most frequently encountered were anaemia (37.33%), age 35+ (15.66%), parity 5+ (16.66%), previous gynecological surgery (8.88%) and history of previous stillbirth or neonatal death (6.11%). The mean number of risk factors in the low risk group was 0.95 compared to 3.03 in the high risk group. Stepwise regression analysis indicated that the reproductive history score was the best one variable predictor of total risk score explaining about 74% of the variation in the total score while the present history score explained a further 16% of the variation and the associated conditions score explained 9% only of the variation. The use of scoring technique is recommended to be used in identification of high risk pregnant women in MCH centers.