Abstract:

Giriş The aim of this prospeetive study was to evaluate maternal weight gain and pregestational weight in aetiolgy of low birth weight (LBW). Yöntem 5000 live born babies were evaluated randomly between October 2000 - May 2001 in the Bakırköy Maternity and Child Hospital in istanbul. LBW was defined as infant weight below 2500 gram and they formed study group. Babies with normal birth weight (NBW) chosen randomly in equal numbers from 5000 live born babies formed control group. Weight gain during pregnaney and pregestational weights of mother in both groups were recorded after an interview with mothers. To evaluate the maternal stature, body mass index (BMI), which was the division of weight by square of height (kg/m<), was calculated for each mother. Bulgular  The rate of mother with a pregestational weight <50kg was 16.6% in LBW group and 8.3% in NBW group. in LBW and NBW groups, rates of mothers with a BMI less than 18.5 kg/m_ were 10.5% and 5.7%, respeetively. in LBW group, 27.8% of mothers had gained <10kg during pregnaney but this rate was 15.6% in NRW group. Sonuç These findings showed that, low pregestational weight, low BMI and low maternal weight gain during pregnaney have very significant effects on birth weight of infant.

Keywords: