Comparison of the pregnancy results between adolescent Syrian refugees and local adolescent Turkish citizens who gave birth in our clinic

Abstract

Adolescence is the transition period from childhood to adulthood; the World Health Organization has defined it as the ages between 10 and 19. Approximately 11% of all births in the world are by adolescent mothers. Pregnant adolescent refugees who have been forced to emigrate due to civil wars raging on in their native countries often face difficult social life conditions, have little or no access to hospitals, and experience language barriers and poor nutritional status have been found to experience poor maternal and obstetric outcomes. These include an increase in cesarean births, premature births, intrauterine growth retardation, and low-birth-weight infant rates. The purpose of the article was to share with you the comparative results of the adolescent pregnancies among the immigrants and among the local adolescents who gave birth between January 2016 and July 2017 in Kocaeli Derince Training and Research Hospital Gynecology Clinic in Kocaeli, Turkey. Its materials and method is a comparative study planned retrospectively between 67 adolescent Syrian refugees and 188 adolescent Turkish locals who gave birth between January 2016 and July 2017. The demographic data, obstetric outcomes, hospitalization durations, and neonatal outcomes of the patients were compared between the groups. Results, no statistically significant difference was found between pregnancy numbers, normal birth rates, cesarean sections and interventional birth rates, nullipara-multipara birth rates, or premature birth rates (<37 weeks) of the pregnant Turkish adolescents and pregnant immigrant adolescents (p > .05). The number of days these patients were hospitalized was found to be lower among Syrian immigrants than among the Turkish locals and statistically significant (p = .045 and p < .05, respectively). In addition, an analysis of the birth rates of low-birth-weight infants revealed that said rates were higher among the Syrian refugees than the Turkish local and statistically borderline significant (p = .049, p < .05, respectively). Between January 2016 and July 2017, a total of 8,570 live births were performed in our clinic. In our study of the 255 patients under the age of 19 who gave live births, 188 were Turkish and 67 were Syrian refugees. The average age of Turkish mothers under 19 was found to be 17.30 ± 1.01 years and the average age of immigrant mothers was found to be 17.27 ± 0.82 years. In conclusion, adolescent pregnancies are more common among Syrian refugees. Adolescent pregnancies are at risk for obstetric and neonatal outcomes. Therefore, studies should be done to prevent these pregnancies.

Keywords:

• Adolescent pregnancy
• immigrant adolescent
• neonatal outcomes
• obstetric outcomes
• Syrian refugees

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.