Comparison of adverse pregnancy outcome between teenage and adult women at a tertiary hospital in South Africa

Teenage pregnancy is considered to be an important public health problem and it is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. Studies from developed and developing countries regarding adverse teenage pregnancy outcomes differ. The objective of this study is to investigate adverse obstetric outcome in teenage pregnancy in comparison with the adult pregnancy at a tertiary hospital in South Africa. A retrospective comparative study was conducted targeting the records of pregnant patients who delivered at a tertiary hospital in South Africa from 1 st September – 30 th November 2010 where the pregnancy outcome of teenagers who were less than 18 years old were compared with the adult women (≥18 years). Binary logistic regression method was carried out to find if teenage age was a significant predictor for the negative pregnancy outcome. Overall, the teenage pregnancy rate over the study period was 10.3%. Significantly higher rate of caesarean delivery was found among adult mothers compared to teenage mothers (p=0.002). Regarding preterm delivery, low birth weight, very low birth weight rate, fresh stillbirth and macerated still birth rates were found to be similar between the teenage and adult mothers (p>0.05). Comparing mean Apgar score between the teenage and adult mothers, the study found significant difference of mean Apgar score at 5 min (9.0 vs. 8.5), (p=0.016).This study highlighted that the teenage mothers show similar obstetrics outcome when compared with their adult counterparts.