Pregnancy, delivery and neonatal outcomes among women with diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy is a common microvascular complication of diabetes. Despite that, there are few studies in the literature to address pregnancy, delivery, or neonatal outcomes among women with diabetic retinopathy.

We conducted a retrospective study using the Health Care Cost and Utilization Project-Nationwide Inpatient Sample Database over 11 years from 2004 to 2014. A delivery cohort was created using ICD-9 codes. ICD-9 code 250 or 249 was used to extract the cases of maternal diabetic retinopathy. A multivariant logistic regression model was used to adjust for statistically significant variables (p-value ≤ .05).

There were a total of 9,096,788 deliveries during the study period. Of those, 86 615 pregnant women were found to have Diabetes Mellites (DM). Diabetic retinopathy was present in 1233 of the patients with DM. Diabetic retinopathy increased the likelihood of developing pregnancy-induced HTN (p < .0001), Preeclampsia (p < .0001), and Preeclampsia and eclampsia superimposed on preexisting HTN (p < .0001). In addition, in women with DM, the presence of diabetic retinopathy increased the risk of Preterm delivery (p = .002), cesarean section (p < .0001), requiring transfusion (p < .0001), and undergoing hysterectomy (p = .001), and were less likely to have a spontaneous vaginal delivery (p < .0001). However, the presence of diabetic retinopathy in women with DM did not increase the risk of the fetus being small at delivery, having intrauterine fetal demise, or congenital anomalies.

Women with diabetic retinopathy should be counseled about their increased risk of pregnancy-induced HTN, preeclampsia, premature delivery, cesarean section, transfusion, and hysterectomy.