Clinical application of Hobel's high-risk pregnancy scoring system

Hobel's high-risk pregnancy screening scoring system was applied to 1,000 deliveries prospectively to test the validity of the screening system. Our results showed that the incidence of high-risk neonates increased significantly as the risk scores during the prenatal and intrapartum periods increased. In this series, 57.7% of the patients belonged to the low-low risk group and 9.8% was classified as the high-high risk group. The incidence of high-risk neonates in the low-low risk group was 13.5% whereas it was 32.0% in the high-high risk group. Further, maternal hypocapnia during delivery was found to be closely related to the incidence of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia in this series and proper management of maternal ventilations during delivery could reduce the incidence of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia.