Abstract

Objective: The study aims to investigate the pregnancy outcomes among teenagers in Burgas region, Bulgaria, to order to outline the factors that influence the occurrence of teenage pregnancies, number of births attributed to teenage mothers, related concomitant diseases, duration of the birth periods and mechanism of birth in adolescent.

Methodology: The study focuses on adolescent patients between the ages of 10 and 18 who presented for childbirth in the time period between 2016 and 2022 in the Mulpi-profile University Hospital for Active Treatment - Burgas, Bulgaria. The focus of the questionnaire was demographic features, birth rate, comorbidities, birth mechanisms, infant anthropometric features and the operative interventions. The data that was collected and analyzed using Excel and IBM’s Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to provide the demographic and inferential statistics related to the topic of research.

Findings: A significant difference was found between the performed episiotomies (p = 0.00001) in adolescent patients (10-18) 61.77% compared to patients in the age group 20-24, where the percentage is 30.83%. The difference between the number of perineoraphys is also statistically significant (p < 0.0072), in adolescent patients (10-18) 10.58% and in patients in the age group 20-24, where the percentage of performed perineoraphys is 4.17%. A significant difference is also found in the number of Obstetrical forceps application (p=0.0654), in the group of adolescent patients (10-18) it was performed in 2.73% and in the patients in the age group 20-24 years the percentage is 0.84%. The findings show that anemia is a primary comorbidity factor for adverse pregnancy outcomes for teenagers and the control group.

Conclusion: Adolescent pregnancy is a social and medical problem. Regional and national policies need to be developed for the early identification of pregnant women in the discussed age group, which would significantly reduce complications during pregnancy. The significant adverse outcomes that are directly linked to teenage pregnancies include higher rates of anemia, operative interventions and infant anthropometric anomalies as well as increased fetal complications such as fetal growth restriction and miscarriage.

Keywords

  • adolescent pregnancy
  • pregnancy outcome
  • anemia
  • preeclampsia
  • perineoraphy
  • episiotomy
  • cesarean section