Assessment of the Frequency of Twin Pregnancies and its Associated Complications in Rasht's Alzahra Hospital during 1997-2002

Introduction & Twin pregnancy is a high risk pregnancy that leads to four fold increase in fetus mortality rate and six fold increase in neonatal mortality rate. This study, done at Alzahra hospital in Rasht, was undertaken to assess the relative frequency and some associated complications of twin pregnancies in a period of five years. This is a descriptive cross sectional study in Rasht’s Alzahra hospital. The data which were gathered from patient’s records, included age, gestational age, parity, type of pregnancy, route of delivery, gender of neonate, weight of neonate, discordances between twins weights, preeclampsia, GDM, fetal anomaly after collection of data. These were analyzed with SPSS software. The frequency of twins was 1.7% and 53.5% of the females were multipara. The highest frequency of twin pregnancies were in females between 20 to 30 years old (32.1%). Preterm delivery in twin’s pregnancy was 60.4% and prevalence of post term was 0.6%. Weight difference above 25% between twins was 13.2%. The prevalence of fetal anomaly, GDM and preeclampsia were 1.6%, 2.3% and 8.8% respectively. 65.8% of ladies with twin pregnancy underwent cesarean section. 47.9% of neonates were male and the weight of 66.87% was under 2500gr. The complications that affect twin pregnancies have special clinical importance. With diagnosis of those complications, appropriate prenatal care, and the experience of delivery team in providing favorable condition for mother and her fetuses it is possible to prevent complications.