Placental abruption & future long-term health of the offspring

Objective
Placental abruption is a significant cause of short-term perinatal morbidity and mortality. We aimed to evaluate the association between placental abruption and long-term health of the offspring.

Study Design
In this population-based cohort study, the incidence of long-term hospitalizations of the offspring due to cardiovascular, endocrine, hematological, respiratory and gastrointestinal morbidities was evaluated in offspring of patients with and without placental abruption. Deliveries occurred between the years 1991 and 2014 in a tertiary medical center. Multifetal pregnancies, pregnancies following fertility treatments, congenital anomalies, pregnancies lacking prenatal care, and perinatal mortality cases were excluded from the analysis. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were used to compare cumulative morbidity incidence. Cox proportional hazards models were performed to control for confounders.

Results
During the study period 217,910, deliveries were included, of which 0.46% (n=1003) were complicated with placental abruption. Children born to mothers with placental abruption did not have a significantly higher cumulative incidence of any of the long-term pediatric morbidities evaluated, as compared with children born to mothers without placental abruption, using Kaplan-Meier survival analyses (Figure). In the Cox regression analyses, adjusted for multiple confounders, placental abruption was not noted as an independent risk factor for long-term cardiovascular, endocrine, hematological, respiratory and gastrointestinal morbidities of the offspring (Table).

Conclusion
Despite the association between placental abruption and adverse short-term perinatal outcome, placental abruption does not seem to jeopardize the long-term morbidity of the offspring.