Maternal haematocrit and pregnancy outcome in Nigerian women

Anaemia is the most common medical disorder in pregnancy and a direct or indirect cause of maternal and perinatal mortality; therefore antenatal care should be concerned with early detection and management. The incidence of anaemia in 735 normal singleton pregnant patients at booking in the University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan, between the 1st of June 2000 and 31 of May 2001 was 15%. Six hundred and thirty-three of the patients (86.1%) presented for delivery at this centre. Five hundred and sixty seven (89.6%) of the patients were not anaemic when seen in labour, reducing the incidence of anaemia to 10.4%. Forty-two (6.6%) and 24 (3.8%) patients had mild and moderate anaemia respectively. No patient had severe anaemia. Of those presenting in labour, 195 (30.8%) were primigravid, while 417 (65.9%) and 21 (3.3%) were multiparous and grandmultiparous respectively. Five hundred and twenty-eight (83.4%) were aged between 21 and 35 years. The mean gestational age at booking was 21.3 weeks and at delivery was 38.7 weeks. Spontaneous vertex delivery was achieved in 76.3% with 96.7% having live births. The perinatal mortality rate was 33 per 1,000 births. Stillbirths occurred more in the moderately anaemic patients. The higher the packed cell volume in labour, the greater the birth weight, better the Apgar scores but the more the blood loss at delivery. The babies of the patients with a normal packed cell volume had better Apgar scores at one minute, which was statistically significant (p value < 0.05), but the mildly anaemic patients had babies with better Apgar scores at 5 minutes. This was however not statistically significant. There was no maternal death.