Obstetric and perinatal outcomes in teenage pregnancy: a literature review

Abstract

Pregnancy during adolescence continues to be a frequent situation, mostly in developing countries. Maternal age is a key element to be taken into account when managing obstetric patients, as it is related with obstetric and perinatal outcomes. We conducted a literature review to address the obstetric results of pregnancy in teenage mothers. We reviewed articles for the last 5 years in different databases including ‘Pregnancy’, ‘Teenager’, ‘Adolescent’, ‘Complications’ and ‘Outcomes’ as key words. We obtained 2260 articles after the initial search, but only 28 met the inclusion criteria and were therefore reviewed. Most studies were excluded for not clearly specifying one of more groups of teenage patients, lacking comparison of these groups with no-teenage patients, or not addressing the obstetric outcomes of those pregnancies. The outcomes were divided into complications of pregnancy, childbirth, puerperium and neonatal complications. We found that there is an association between young maternal age and preterm birth, pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, fetal growth restriction and stillbirth, among others. For the newborn we found outcomes such as low APGAR scores and admission to intensive care were more frequent in teenage mothers. We conclude that maternal age is an important feature, as there are several obstetric and perinatal compications that are more frequent in teenage mothers than in other age groups.