More and more women are undergoing operations to treat obesity, so a group of researchers has decided to analyze the risks that these women or their babies may have during pregnancy and childbirth.
Scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that women undergoing obesity surgery had a higher risk of preterm birth and of giving birth to small babies for your gestational age.
To conduct the study, they compared more than 2,500 children born between 1992 and 2009 of women who had previously undergone bariatric surgery (operations aimed at treating obesity) with 12,500 babies of mothers who had not had surgery.
According to the results, Mothers with the same BMI gave birth to babies of different weight depending on whether or not they had undergone bariatric surgery, so there is some kind of association.
It is not that due to this study, surgeries to treat obesity are not recommended. The mother's obesity is in itself a risk factor which can lead to serious complications in both pregnancy and childbirth, such as: increased risk of abortion, congenital malformations, preeclampsia, as well as having a macrosomic baby (too large), among others.
Therefore, what is intended with the study is that the pregnancies of women who have undergone such an operation be treated as high risk pregnancies, as they need more prenatal care to avoid premature delivery or babies born with low weight.
