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| Multiple births put women at risk: study |
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StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) reported on Wednesday December 1st, 2004.
Multiple births put women at risk: study
by Sharon Kirkey, CanWest News Service
Women carrying two or more babies are 13 times more likely to suffer
heart failure, four times more likely to have a heart attack and more
than twice as likely to develop life-threatening blood clots in their
legs or lungs than women pregnant with just one fetus, new Canadian
research reveals.
Doctors have been warning of an "explosion" in twins, triplets and
quadruplets as more women postpone pregnancy, then turn to high-tech
fertility treatments when they're older and ready to have a baby.
Fertility clinics have for years transferred two, three or more
fertilized eggs at once during in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other
treatments, with the hope that at least one will implant and lead to a
baby. But that boosts the odds of having more than one baby.
As well, drugs to stimulate ovulation can lead to the release of
multiple eggs. It's already known the more fetuses a woman carries,
the greater the risk to the babies of growth abnormalities and birth
defects. But, until now, the physical stress ont he mothers' bodies
has been mostly unknown.
The study, based on data from more than 200,000 pregnancies in Canada
over a 16-year period, also shows women with "multifetal" pregnancies
are significantly more likely to suffer a postpartum hemorrhage and
need an emergency hysterectomy or blood transfusion because of heavy
bleeding.
"I think the big implication is that for people taking care of these
pregnancies - obstetricians or high-risk obstetricians - we have to be
more vigilant for these complications and that part of our antenatal
counselling is to talk about the fact that some of these complications
are more likely," says researcher Dr. Mark Walker, an associate
scientist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and a high-risk
obstetrician in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the
University of Ottawa.
His study is published in the current issue of the journal BJOG
(British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology).
In Canada, birth of twins rose 35 per cent between 1974 and 1990,
while the incidence of triplets, quadruplets and other "higher order"
multiple births soared 250 per cent. In 1997, 126 sets of triplets
were born in Canada, compared to 49 sets in 1980, according to the
Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada.
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