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Low birthweight and post partum endometritis-myometritis
1Department of International Health, University of Oslo, Norway.
Background:
The study aims at confirming or rejecting the hypothesis of an association between birthweight and post partum uterine infection.
Methods:
A case-referent study was performed on 51 puerperal women with clinical signs of endometritis-myometritis. To each case an otherwise healthy puerperal woman was recruited and matched for age, parity and days after delivery.
Results:
The proportion of women having had newborns with birthweight < 2500 g was 20/49 among cases and 2/50 among referents (odds ratio 16.6; 95% CI 3.5-152.3). Preterm births were registered in 15/50 cases and 2/49 referents (odds ratio 10.1; 95% CI 2.1-94.5). The average gestational age at delivery was approximately 2 weeks shorter among cases than among referents (37.5 versus 39.5 weeks).
Conclusions:
Low birth weight was ten times more prevalent among women with puerperal infection than among healthy puerperal women. The findings indicate that giving birth to a low birth weight baby is strongly associated with ensuing puerperal infection, possibly by a subclinical antenatal intrauterine infection, predisposing to both adverse fetal and maternal outcomes of pregnancy.