Assessing Pregnancy Outcomes in Women with Mild Β-Thalassemia: A Study on Maternal and Fetal Health

Abstract

Background: Pregnancy-related physiological changes exacerbate the severity of anemia and are linked to a higher risk of preterm birth, low birth weight, and fetal growth limitation.

Aim: Finding out how pregnant women with mild β-thalassemia fared was the goal of this study.

Material & Methods: Fifty women in all who came to the RV Hospital consultation clinic for prenatal care visits were screened one after the other and participated in the current cross-sectional study in Gurugram, India. From May 20 2023 to February 10, 2024, the patients were monitored for pregnancy outcomes until delivery.

Result:  A history of infant death was present in about 14.0% of the patients. Anemia (18.0%) and a history of preeclampsia (16.0%) were the most common clinical characteristics. 14.3% of the patients' neonates were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), whereas the majority of patients (80.0%) had tried a normal vaginal delivery. Due to a low Apgar score, just one newborn passed away five minutes after delivery. According to the study, newborns admitted to the NICU had lower Apgar scores after one and five minutes than the group that was not admitted (5.71 and 6.71 vs. 7.24 and 9.29, respectively). Mothers of newborns admitted to the NICU were more likely to have had a caesarean section (C/S) (71.4%; P = 0.001), had a history of preeclampsia (57.1%; P = 0.005), and had a greater incidence of having a previous dead infant (42.9%; P = 0.031).

Conclusion: The current study indicates that the prevalence of clinical problems was higher among β-thalassemia newborns admitted to the NICU than among those who were not.