Lalithambica Karunakaran1, Deepthi P.S.2, Shijini T.3, Rasiya V.R.4, Ancy Joseph5
BACKGROUND
Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID 19) outbreak have evolved rapidly throughout
the world. The knowledge on severe acute respiratory disease-corona virus-2
(SARS-CoV-2) infection in pregnant women and newborn is incomplete.
Understanding the impact of COVID 19 in pregnancy in terms of morbidity
mortality, perinatal and neonatal outcome is essential to propose a strategy for
the management of pregnant women with COVID 19 infection.
METHOD
It is a prospective study of all pregnant women who have delivered in the period
of April 2020 to December 2020 at Government T.D. Medical College, Alappuzha.
In this study, the mode of delivery, neonatal outcome, maternal mortality,
morbidity were evaluated. The outcome of pregnancies includes vaginal delivery,
caesarean delivery, vacuum delivery and intrauterine fetal demise.
RESULTS
A total of 265 pregnant women infected with COVID 19 delivered during the
period. Out of these, 49.4 % was full term caesarean delivery, 3.8 % was preterm
caesarean delivery, 39.3 % was full term vaginal delivery and 4.9 % was preterm
vaginal delivery. Moreover, 1.1 % of the total pregnant women had intrauterine
fetal demise on admission. Among 265 new-borns, 2.3 % babies became COVID
19 positive, of this, 83.3 % were mothers who delivered within 7 days of COVID
19 infection. 0.75 % needed resuscitative emergency caesarean delivery for
COVID 19 pneumonia. 0.38 % maternal mortality occurred during the period due
to COVID 19 infection.
CONCLUSIONS
Obstetric outcome in most COVID 19 infected term pregnant patients is
comparable to non-COVID 19 pregnant women except for a higher incidence of
caesarean delivery. Most of the neonates who became positive were born to
mothers delivered within 7 days of COVID 19 infection. Severe morbidity among
COVID 19 pregnant women were seen only in a small proportion complicated by
COVID 19 pneumonia, who required ventilator support.
