Abstracts - Posters

Project Ice Storm: The Effect of Perinatal Maternal Stress on Labor-Delivery Complications

Carolina Ruiz Culebro¹, David Laplante, Alain Brunet and Suzanne King
¹McGill University
carolina.ruizculebro@mail.mcgill.ca

It's been shown that during pregnancy maternal anxiety is related to perinatal complications. The goal of the present study was to determine whether an exposure to a stressor independent of the mothers' own personalities (1998 Quebec Ice Storm) is also associated with an increased risk of perinatal complications. Labor/delivery complications and birth outcomes were obtained from 131 women who were exposed to varying levels of stress during their pregnancies. The results indicate that the level of prenatal stress experienced by the women was not related to labor/delivery and neonatal outcomes but that the timing of the exposure, as a result of the ice storm, was related to both labor/delivery and neonatal outcomes. Women exposed during their third trimester of pregnancy experienced twice as many moderate to severe labor/delivery complications compared to women exposed during the first or second trimester of pregnancy. Furthermore, more premature births (‹ 37 weeks) were reported by women exposed to the storm in their second trimester (13.6%) compared to women exposed at their first (8%) or third (4.9%) trimester. These results indicate that exposure to independent stressors appears to differentially affect labor/delivery complications and neonatal outcomes.

2005-04-06