Uterine rupture and the risk for offspring long-term respiratory morbidity

Abstract

Introduction

Uterine rupture during labor is a life-threatening event associated with high morbidity for both mother and fetus. While the immediate maternal and neonatal outcomes of uterine rupture are well established, less is known regarding the long-term respiratory morbidity of offspring which survived uterine rupture.

Aim

To assess whether a history of uterine rupture at birth, is associated with an increased risk for future offspring respiratory morbidity.

Materials and methods

In this population-based retrospective cohort study, all singleton deliveries between 1991 and 2014 were included. Known offspring chromosomal or congenital anomalies and cases of perinatal mortality were excluded from the analysis. The incidence of hospitalizations with respiratory morbidities, predefined in a set of ICD-9 codes, was compared between offspring delivered with or without uterine rupture. Cox proportional hazards models were conducted, to control for each confounder separately.

Results

During the study period 238,622 deliveries met the inclusion criteria, of those 127 (0.053%) were complicated by uterine rupture. Rates of respiratory related hospitalizations were 7.1 and 4.9%, among offspring delivered with or without uterine rupture, respectively (p = .22), and in the Kaplan- Meier survival curves, no significant differences were found between the groups (log rank test p = .241). While using Cox proportional hazards models and controlling for each confounder separately, uterine rupture was not found to be an independent risk factor for long-term respiratory morbidity of the offspring.

Conclusion

Uterine rupture was not found as an independent risk factor for offspring long-term respiratory morbidity. The limited number of cases in the exposed group, could only demonstrate a trend with no significance, and therefore further investigation is required.

Keywords:

• Apgar score
• offspring respiratory morbidity
• pediatric respiratory morbidity
• uterine rupture

Acknowledgment

This study was conducted as part of the requirements for MD degree from the Goldman Medical School at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Disclosure statement

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