Adverse perinatal outcome in teenage pregnancies: an analysis of a 5-year period in Southeastern Hungary.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the risks of adverse perinatal outcomes of teenage mothers.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed on teenage mothers (under 20 years of age) who delivered in the period of 2010-2014 at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Szeged (study group). All mothers who delivered in Hungary during the same period were studied as a control group. The following parameters were analyzed: demographic data of the mothers, maternal complications, perinatal outcome and congenital malformations of the newborns. The binominal test, Student's t-test and Poisson's regression were applied using STATA 9.0 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA) statistical software (p < .05 was considered to be statistically significant).

RESULTS: During this 5-year period, 12,845 births were recorded at the Department, of these 274 (2.1%) were teenage pregnancies with 275 newborns. The offsprings of teenage mothers had significantly lower mean birth weight (3110.2 ± 564.03 g versus 3247 g), higher rate of congenital malformations (8.0 versus 5.0%) and higher admission to neonatal intensive care unit (12.4 versus 8.0%) than the infants in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS: Younger maternal age was significantly associated with lower mean birth weight, higher risk of congenital malformations, and increased admission rate to neonatal intensive care unit.