International Journal of Medical Sciences (IJMS)

Background : Interpregnancy intervals (IPI) whether it was short or long do accompany with poor birth consequences. Short birth interval caused damage to perinatal, neonatal, child and maternal health. Needless to mention that women with IPI are more likely to develop cardio- vascular diseases; furthermore, recent research explain there is a correlation between extremes in IPI and autism spectrum disorder development in offspring. Aim of the study : This study aimed to present the correlation between extremes in IPI and set of obstetrical , neonatal and maternal complications. Patient and method : This retrospective study conducted by researchers in AL Batool Maternity Teaching Hospital – Diyala, Iraq targeted all pregnant women visited obstetrics and gynecology department from Dec,2021 to April, 2022.Indeed, inter pregnancy interval adopted as a criteria to split groups of 102 samples in to three categories. First category included 36 pregnant women with IPI less than 18 months. Second included 36 pregnant women with the range of (18-59) months and last category included IPI greater than 60 months. Hence, considerable information gathered by questionnaire to list maternal history in this study such as age, gravida, para, abortion , last menstrual period ,gestational age ,expected date of delivery ,date of admission ,date of delivery , medical and obstetrical complications, in addition to neonatal morbidity. Results: Among 102 participants of more than one pregnancy subjected to this study . 36(35.29%) with < 18 months IPIs , 36 (35.29%) between (18-60) months IPIs and 30 (29.41%) >60 months IPIs. Table (1) illustrates concrete link between age , parity and IPI of P value less than 0.01.Inter pregnancy interval <18 months of age range from 16-29 yrs. Inclined to have the highest percentage. similarly groups of one or two deliveries reflect highest percentage of IPI <18 months. Additionally, groups of age from 30-43 yrs. tend to have highest percentage of IPIs >60 months and this comes close or similar to the percentage of women who have three or more deliveries. Conclusion : • To conclude what is studied and observed in term of implications of interpregnancy intervals on series of complications such as weight, premature birth , admission to NICU, maternal or neonatal morbidity, SGA. • Pregnancy intervals length has no relation to the potential of having surgical delivery. • parity and age versus IPIs length of targeted cases in our research.