Recalling the severity of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy – a study using Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis Questionnaire

Abstract

The accuracy of the recall of the severity of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) with Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis (PUQE) questionnaire has been questioned. We aimed to compare PUQE scores of women recalling the worst episode of NVP of their current pregnancy in different gestational weeks (gwks). Total of 2343 pregnant women (gwks 7–40) were recruited. Four groups were formed according to the gwks at reply: ≤16 gwks (n = 554), ≤20 gwks (n = 1209), >20 gwks (n = 1134) and ≥24 gwks (n = 495). PUQE scores were similar between the groups. Consequently, consistency of PUQE scores across the groups endorses the useability of the PUQE questionnaire in retrospective assessment of the overall severity of NVP in different gwks, regardless of passing of the peak NVP symptoms.

Impact statement

• What is already known on this subject? Retrospective evaluation of the severity of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) has been argued to be disposed to recall bias. Structured Pregnancy-Unique Quantification of Emesis (PUQE) questionnaire is a validated tool for assessing the severity of NVP.

• What do the results of this study add? When the women recalled the most severe NVP symptoms of their current pregnancy, no differences in the PUQE scores were found despite different gestational weeks at reply. Of distinct PUQE questions, women answering in early pregnancy reported longer duration of nausea than women answering in late pregnancy, but other questions were rated similarly.

• What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? Our aim was to compare the PUQE scores between the women who filled in the PUQE questionnaire in early or in late pregnancy, instructed to recall their worst symptoms in their current pregnancy. As there were no differences between the groups in total PUQE scores, our results support the application of PUQE questionnaire to assess the severity of NVP during pregnancy not only concurrent to the peak symptoms but also retrospectively.

Keywords:

• Nausea
• vomiting
• pregnancy
• PUQE
• recall
• memory

Acknowledgements

We want to express our gratitude for the women in our study.

Ethical approval

The Joint Ethics Committees of Turku University Hospital and University of Turku gave ethical approval (58/180/2011) and the study was performed in accordance with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki. The participants gave written informed consent.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The dataset of this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by Emil Aaltonen Foundation (research grant for LL). The funding source was not involved in the study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation of the data or submitting the manuscript.