Birth weight discordance and adverse perinatal outcomes

Our purpose was to examine the association between discordant growth and perinatal mortality and morbidity among twins with careful adjustment for maternal confounding factors.

Two cohorts with and without chorionicity data were compared using generalized estimating modeling.

Our population-based dataset consisted of 12,656 individual twins from whom 4% (452/12,656) had≥30% growth discordance. A subgroup of this population with chorionicity information had an incidence of 7.3%≥30% growth discordance. In growth-discordant twins, perinatal mortality and morbidity were higher than concordant pairs (P<0.01). Low Apgar score and perinatal mortality were more frequent in growth-discordant twins compared with growth-concordant ones (all P<0.01).

Birth weight discordance (BWD) places twins at increased risk of perinatal mortality. Growth discordance was also an independent risk factor for lower Apgar score of 5 min less than 5.