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Thursday, February 19, 2004Women who give birth to small babies -- whether prematurely or not -- are more likely to have stillborns during their next pregnancy, a study found. The Swedish study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that the same causes may underlie both stillbirths and stunted growth in fetuses. However, because so little can be done about many growth problems, the study is not expected to bring about any big changes in obstetrics. The risk is there, but it's a small one (and one that I would argue most obstetricians are already cognizant of, since they treat women with prior preterm, low birthweight babies as higher than average risks): The researchers used a national registry with 410,021 women who had two consecutive pregnancies resulting in live or stillbirths. ....Preterm newborns raised the later risk of a stillbirth only if they were also small for their fetal age. The risk of a later stillbirth was five times higher if the newborn was both very small for its fetal age and very early in its delivery -- before 32 weeks. ...Though small newborns heightened the risk of later stillbirths, the overall rate of stillbirths for the second pregnancy was low at 2.6 per 1,000 births. Even in the highest-risk group, there were only 19 stillbirths per 1,000 births. posted by Sydney on 2/19/2004 08:10:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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