PURPOSE: to evaluate the nutritional condition of pregnant adolescents using the pregestational body mass index (BMI) and the BMI at the end of pregnancy and to establish a possible association with the type of delivery and weight of the newborn child. METHODS: in a descriptive retrospective observational study 558 pregnant teenagers as well as their newborns were evaluated in the Obstetrics outpatient clinic of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil (UNIFESP-EPM), from January 1998 to December 2000. The sample consisted of pregnant girls who were between 10 and 19 years old at the time of the first prenatal examination, excluding the teenagers who had preexistent disease and those with incomplete data in their records. Thus, the sample consisted of 300 pregnant teenagers. Qualitative variables are presented as absolute and relative frequency and quantitative variables as mean, standard deviation and range. The correlation between maternal variables (pre-pregnancy BMI and final BMI) and parameters of the newborn (type of delivery and weight) was determined by the c² test and the differences were identified by partitioning of the c² values, with the level of significance set at p < 0.05 (a = 0.05). RESULTS: nutritional deviation was detected in 34.7% of the girls, at the beginning of pregnancy. Of these adolescents, 27.7% presented malnutrition, 4% were overweight and 3% were obese. By the end of the gestational period, BMI of 54.3% of them was normal, 1.3% correponded to malnutrition, 27% to overweight and 17.3% to obesity. The mother's nutritional condition (malnutrition, normal, overweight and obesity) did not affect the method of delivery, either vaginal (80.3%) or cesarean section (19.7%). The patients who reached end of pregnancy with BMI corresponding to malnutrition had 75% of neonates under 2.500 g. CONCLUSIONS: the mother's nutritional status was not related to the type of delivery. BMI corresponding to malnutrition at the end of pregnancy was significantly related to more cases of newborn babies under 2.500 g.
Adolescence; Normal pregnancy; Malnutrition; Obesity; Low birth weight
