Predicting birth outcomes: together, mother and health care provider know best

To examine contributors to perceived risk in pregnancy and its utility in predicting lower birth weight and earlier delivery in conjunction with health care providers' assessment of obstetric risk.

165 pregnant women at high (n=34) or low (n=131) obstetric risk completed assessments of perceived risk, stress, optimism, and health behaviors using well-validated instruments and measures designed for this study. Medical charts were abstracted for gestational age at delivery and birth weight.

40% of the sample perceived their risk status differently than their health care provider. Stress, poor reproductive history, provider assigned risk, and unhealthful behaviors were significant, independent predictors of perceived risk (R(2)=.37). The greatest difference in birth weight (p=.003) and gestational age (p=.05) was between women considered at low risk by both self and provider and women considered at high risk by both. Perceived risk improved prediction of adverse birth outcomes, especially lower birth weight, in women considered by providers to be at low risk.

Women's perceptions of risk are an important contributor to prediction of birth outcomes, but the combination of information from both a woman and her health care provider is superior. Incorporating women's perceptions into obstetric risk determination may help to reduce the number of women identified as high risk who subsequently have a normal birth outcome (false positives), and more importantly, the number of women considered to be at low risk who ultimately experience an adverse outcome (false negatives).