Study highlights miscarriage risks
Updated on 08 October 2008
Women who have had just one miscarriage are more likely to suffer complications in future pregnancies, research has suggested.
Compared with women who enjoyed a successful first pregnancy, they are more likely to have a premature baby and/or a child with a low birthweight.
They are also more 3.3 times more likely to suffer potentially life-threatening pre-eclampsia and 1.7 times more likely to have a threatened miscarriage, where they have symptoms of a miscarriage but do not actually miscarry.
Such women are also 1.3 times more likely to have bleeding after 24 weeks in their subsequent pregnancy compared with those who had a successful first pregnancy.
The study also found that women who have suffered one miscarriage are more than twice as likely to have labour induced and almost six times as likely to need intervention at labour in a subsequent pregnancy, such as the use of forceps.
The authors said it highlighted that just one miscarriage could affect future pregnancies and that these women should be monitored as well as those who have recurrent miscarriages.
Research has shown that one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first three months and one in 100 women have recurrent miscarriages (three or more in a row).
The study also found that, compared with women pregnant for the first time, women who had suffered just one miscarriage were more at risk of a threatened miscarriage, induced labour, premature birth and haemorrhage.
Researchers from the University of Aberdeen looked at a total of 1,561 women who had suffered a first miscarriage, 10,549 who had had a previous live birth and 21,118 who were giving birth for the first time.
The findings were published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
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