[The elderly primipara: a risk assessment]

In order to assess birth risk a study was made of parturition and neonatal findings in 196 late primiparae from a total collective of 4993 primiparae and multiparae covering all age groups. The investigation covered the frequency of surgery, the type of delivery, indications for surgery, Apgar scores, the birthweight of the newborns, the incidence of premature and deficient births, neonatal morbidity and mortality, and maternal mortality. With advancing age of the mother there is a distinct increase in the number of surgical deliveries, while the number of normal-weight infants decreases. There is a slight increase in the number of infants weighing less than 2500 g, and a distinct increase in the number weighing over 4000 g. The reason for this is not the number of diabetic or prediabetic mothers, but the high proportion of boys. Neither age nor parity have any significant influence on the incidence of premature and deficient births. With regard to neonatal morbidity and mortality, late primiparae do not differ fundamentally from the patient collective as a whole. The incidence of surgical delivery is distinctly higher among late primiparae, but this enables them to give birth with a risk which is only slightly higher than that for younger women.