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Maternal health in women with spina bifida: A scoping review
1Pediatric Bladder-Urethra Rehabilitation Clinic, Department of Pediatric Urology, Severance Children's Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Background:
An increasing number of women with spina bifida are reaching reproductive age and may consider pregnancy. However, limited evidence on how spina bifida affects maternal health can hinder tailored counseling and guidance, contributing to uncertainty during pregnancy-related decision-making.
Objective:
This scoping review aimed to synthesize existing literature on maternal health among women with spina bifida, focusing on pregnancy and childbirth outcomes, women's health-related outcomes, care needs, and health-related decision-making across pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting contexts.
Methods:
This scoping review was conducted in accordance with the five-stage framework proposed by Arksey and O'Malley. PubMed and CINAHL Plus with Full Text were searched using indexed terms and Boolean operators to identify articles published from January 1949 to December 2025.
Results:
Of 2668 records screened, 39 met inclusion criteria. The evidence base was dominated by case reports, with large-scale secondary analyses and qualitative studies emerging recently. Evidence was mapped across pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. Pregnancy-related evidence included clinical changes and complications, prenatal assessment findings, and subjective pregnancy experiences. Childbirth-related evidence included delivery methods, anesthesia management, delivery characteristics and complications, postpartum strategies reported in case reports, post-delivery symptom changes, and subjective childbirth experiences. Parenting evidence was limited to subjective experiences describing adaptive caregiving strategies.
Conclusion:
This review synthesizes 77 years of research on maternal health among women with spina bifida across pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. The findings highlight clinical insights and evidence gaps, underscoring the need for condition-specific, life-course-oriented care and research addressing postpartum recovery, parenting, and women's physical, social, and psychological well-being.
