Best prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes

Summary

The purpose of this study is to compare two methods for assessing whether a newborn baby is underweight or overweight relative to its gestational age. The one method, which is in common use in Norway, is to assess birth weight in light of gestational age, where one would say that a child is underweight (small for gestational age) if it is below the 10 percentile weight for his pregnancy week. The second method is to use customized birth weight, which also takes into account ethnicity and maternal height and weight.

This study is a registry study, which collects data from the Medical Birth Registry (MFR) and Statistics Norway (Statistics Norway). Information to be obtained from MFR is: The child's gender, birth year, birth weight, gestational age, stillbirth, death in the first year of life, maternal weight before pregnancy, maternal height, hospital admission for the first year of life, parity, congenital malformations, isoimmunization. Information on country background (ethnicity) is obtained from Statistics Norway. Data from several countries such as Finland, Denmark, Wales and England are included in this study. In Norway, all births are included in the period 1999 to 2016. Some of the outcomes are rare, such as stillbirth, and it is desirable to have as high a precision as possible. When several countries participate, one has the opportunity to verify findings from one country to another. This can increase the generalisability of the findings. This new knowledge can have consequences on how the newborn child should be followed up in health services.

Exemption from consent has been sought on the grounds that MFR is a central health register that is not consent-based and which is created with research as a main purpose. The data will be unidentified and does not pose a threat to privacy. There are no disadvantages for the participants.