Obesity During Pregnancy Carries Bigger Price Tag

Study finds the extra health-care costs strain the system

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

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WEDNESDAY, April 2 (HealthDay News) -- It is well-known that obesity increases the chances of medical complications during pregnancy, but now a new study shows it also puts a financial strain on the health-care system.

Obese women who are pregnant tend to have longer hospital stays, require more medications, and spend more time with their doctors than normal-weight women do. Much of this is due to complications such as high blood pressure, preeclampsia and Caesarean deliveries, researchers find.

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"Right now, about one in five women in the United States who deliver babies are obese," said lead researcher Susan Y. Chu, a senior epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Given that there are about 4 million births in the United States each year, that translates to almost 1 million obese women giving birth."

"Obesity during pregnancy is associated with more use of health-care services," Chu said. "Even if there is a small increase, it is going to have substantial financial implications."

The report is published in the April 3 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study, Chu's team collected data on 13,442 pregnancies that occurred from 2000 to 2004. These births were recorded by a large managed-care system. The researchers looked at the relationship between obesity and the use of health-care services before and during pregnancy.

Chu's group found that obese women have significantly longer hospital stays compared with normal-weight women. For most obese women, a hospital stay was 4.1 days longer than it was for normal-weight women.

The increased hospital stays were mostly related to more Caesarean deliveries among obese women than normal-weight women, Chu said.

In addition, obese women required more prenatal tests, more ultrasound examinations and more medications than normal-weight women. Obese women also made more phone calls to their doctors and had more physician visits than normal-weight women, the researchers found.

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