Pregnancy-related emergencies: Profile and outcome

National efforts to reduce maternal mortality with respect to community services have primarily focused on upgrading transportation infrastructure and formalizing training for care providers. There is, however, a paucity of baseline data on the profile and outcomes of pregnant women presenting to the Emergency Department (ED) in India.

This retrospective study enrolled all pregnant women presenting to a large tertiary medical care center in India, between November 2016 and November 2017.

There were 696 ED visits by pregnant women during the study period. The mean age was 26.85 (SD: 4.88) years. Pregnant women in the first trimester contributed to 50.8% of all visits, and 54% being multigravida. The most common presenting complaints were bleeding/spotting per vaginum (PV) (38.2%) and abdominal pain (37.6%) followed by fever (21.6%) and vomiting (21.5%). Obstetric causes contributed to 53.2% of the ED visits, while nonobstetric causes amounted to 43.2%. Over a third (39.7%) required hospital admission. Of these patients, 73% delivered in CMC with live births amounting to 62.3% while 3.5% ended in fetal deaths. The miscarriages rate was as high as 28%. More than half (51.1%) of the deliveries were by normal vaginal delivery. There were no maternal deaths during the time of admission.

Our study sheds new light on the profile of emergency visits among pregnant patients and their relationship to the outcome of pregnancy. First trimester visits were most common with complaints of bleeding PV and abdominal pain. This could explain the high rate of miscarriages among this population.