Prenatal risk score and pregnancy outcome: A study in Nepal

Usually expectant mothers having risk factors experience more complications. Identification of high risk pregnancies at an early stage with a simple risk scoring system can anticipate complications. Timely appropriate intervention care can have an impact on maternal mortality and morbidity especially in a low resource country. The study objective was to screen the risk status of pregnant mothers at community level using a simple scoring system with 28 prenatal and 16 intrapartum factors and assess pregnancy outcome. Also to compare the sensitivity & specificity tests of pregnancy outcome by risk score at different cut off points, check effectiveness of the optimum score for this simple scoring system. Low birth weight and neonatal death were undesirable pregnancy outcome. Pregnancy outcome was analyzed with risk score of mothers ranging from 0 to 5. Cut off point at score of 3 was found to be ideal to identify high risk cases with optimum sensitivity and specificity of the test.The study suggests that it is possible to screen at risk expectant mothers using a simple scoring system. Appropriate timely intervention care can change the risk status of the expectant mother with a better pregnancy outcome thereby influence maternal mortality and morbidity rate.