Health care utilisation of women who experience pregnancy-related reflux, nausea and/or vomiting

Abstract

Objective: Nausea, vomiting and reflux are common conditions experienced by women during pregnancy. The objective of this project was to examine women’s use of health services for these conditions.

Methods: The study sample was obtained via the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health. A total of 2445 women who were pregnant or who had recently given birth in 2009 were invited to complete a sub-survey in 2010 about pregnancy and health service utilisation. A response rate of 79.2% was obtained.

Results: During their pregnancy, 604 (32.9%) respondents experienced nausea, with 255 (42.2%) of these women seeking help from a health care practitioner. A total of 201 women (11%) reported repeated vomiting, and 637 women (34.7%) reported reflux, of which 78.6% and 59.2% sought help, respectively. There were no significant differences in the mental and physical health measures between women with nausea, vomiting and/or reflux who sought help and women who did not. Having private health insurance with obstetric cover was associated with seeking help for reflux; this was the only demographic measure significantly associated with seeking help for any condition.

Conclusion: Research is required to understand why many women do not seek professional help for common gastrointestinal conditions during pregnancy.

Keywords:

• Pregnancy
• nausea
• vomiting
• reflux
• health service research

Acknowledgements

The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, which was conceived and developed by groups of interdisciplinary researchers at the Universities of Newcastle and University of Queensland, is funded by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing. We thank all participants for their valuable contribution to this project. We also thank the NHMRC for funding Professor Jon Adams via an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship as well as the ARC for funding this project via their Discovery Project Funding (DP1094765).

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.