Comparison of Birth Weights of Pre-Delivery Anemic and Non-Anemic Routine Iron Supplemented Pregnant Women

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of pre-delivery hematological parameters on birth weight and to compare their relationship with maternal age and parity in women who had taken routine iron supplementation during pregnancy STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective study was conducted among low-risk pregnant women who were delivered at term. Pre-delivery hematological parameters and clinical information were extracted from patient files and compared with birth weights. Women with known hematological disorders, women with the previous history of intravenous iron treatment and the ones who did not regularly use iron supplementation were excluded. RESULTS: All patients (1066) had undergone complete blood testing before delivery. Mean values for hemoglobin, hematocrit, mean corpuscular volume, red blood cell count and red cell distribution width were as follows; 10.9g/dL (±1.4), 34.6 % (±4.3), 84.6fL (±7.8), 4.1g/dL (±0.4), and 14.2 % (±2.5), respectively. When all patients are evaluated, 300 (28%) of them were found to be anemic according to Word Health Organization criteria but not for the former ACOG cut-off, which was 9.5 g/dL. There was no significant association between pre-delivery anemia and birth weight. However, the anemic women group was found to be slightly younger than non-anemic ones according to both criteria. CONCLUSION: Our results documented that younger age was associated with more pronounced anemia before delivery. This study did not show any association between pre-delivery anemia and low birth weight irrespective of maternal age. There is a need for further reports investigating the prognostic importance of hemoglobin reduction during pregnancy for infant birth weight in specific age groups and placental insufficiency related conditions.