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Stillbirths Associated with High Hemoglobin Concentrations
Nov. 21, 2000 A recent study has shown that when a pregnant woman has high hemoglobin concentrations in her blood she is almost 2 times as likely to experience a stillbirth than a woman who has hemoglobin concentrations in the normal range. The study was conducted by Dr. Olof Stephansson and his associates at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and the results appeared in the November 22/29 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The group studied 702 women who had a first pregnancy resulting in a stillbirth and compared them to 702 women who had a first pregnancy resulting in a live birth. They found that when the hemoglobin concentration measured 146 g/L or more at approximately 20 weeks’ gestation, the woman was 1.8 times as likely to experience a stillbirth than a woman with midrange hemoglobin concentrations. The results were adjusted to control for other factors associated with stillbirth. Closer examination showed that when small for gestational age stillbirths were examined, the risk of a stillborn infant was 4 times higher when the mother had high hemoglobin concentrations. When the study excluded women with eclampsia or preeclampsia, the risk of a stillborn birth was 15 times higher. Dr. Stephansson and his associates have suggested that high hemoglobin levels in early pregnancy compromise the survival of the infant, perhaps by impairing fetal growth. The conclusion of this study is that all pregnancies in which the mother has high hemoglobin concentrations should be considered high risk. It was suggested by Dr. Stephansson’s team that “it may be prudent to perform repeated ultrasound scannings on these pregnancies.”
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