Epidemiological study of pregnant women admitted to the emergency department

Objective: Pregnancy is an important psychological and biological phenomenon in women’s life. Pregnancy has many complications jeopardizing the well-being of the mother and the child. Methods: In this retrospective study, the data including demographic information, chief complaint, the initial diagnosis, referral decision, final diagnosis, hospitalization outcome and pregnancy outcomes were studied on 239 pregnant women admitted to the emergency departments of the general hospitals of East Azerbaijan province. Results: The average age of patients was 27.54 years. The time period from the initial presentation to completely leave the emergency department was reported to be 3.66 hours on average. In this study, most patients (74.5%) did not have a history of abortion. Exploring the time of admission for all cases, most patients were admitted from 8 pm to 8 am (67.8%), and 32.2% were referred from 8 am to 8 pm. Concerning the time of pregnancy, 46.4% were at their second trimester of pregnancy. Most of the patients were admitted in cold seasons of the year. The most common chief compliant was abdominal pain with 32.2% frequency. In addition, the most frequent primary diagnoses were an acute abdomen and trauma at 25.5% and 14.2% respectively. Conclusion: Abdominal pain and acute abdomen have the most frequency as the chief compliant and initial diagnosis especially during the second trimester of pregnancy. In this regard, appropriate training and skillful staff are needed to deal with the complaints and complications of abdominal pain. More than half of pregnant women referred to the emergency departments were hospitalized or admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). This signals the necessity of adequate facilities to provide proper care for this group.