Abstract
Background: Pre-eclampsia is the most common medical problem in pregnancy as it's specific syndrome that affects many organ systems and is recognized by new onset of hypertension and proteinuria that occur after 20 weeks' gestation.
Objective: to determine the prevalence of pre-eclampsia and to determinant the main risk factors affecting the incidence rate of the cases among pregnant mothers in Arar city, KSA.
Methods: A cross sectional, community-based study conducted in Arar city, KSA, during the period from 1st September to 30 November, 2018, on 299 pregnant women with age group from 18 to 55 years. Data was collected through a pre-designed, online questionnaire. We utilized the SPSS program (Version 22) to analyze the study data. The X2 test was used as a test of significance, and differences were considered significant at P value less than 0.05. Results: Pre-eclampsia was found in 20.7% of the total number of participants. Although the prevalence of pre-eclampsia in mothers aged between 25 and 35 years is 56.5%, we found no significant correlation between maternal age and pre-eclampsia. More than half (58.1%) of the positive cases to pre-eclampsia had family history of pre-eclampsia, and we found a highly significant association between the two variables (P<0.01) while we found insignificant correlation between pre-eclampsia and hypertension or diabetes mellitus as pre-eclampsia complicated 3.2% of the pregnancies with chronic hypertension and 1.7 of the pregnancies without chronic hypertension (P>0.05) also pre-eclampsia complicated 8.1% of the pregnancies with DM and 5.5% of the pregnancies without DM (P>0.05). that, 8.1% of mothers of twins pregnancy and 9.7% of the mothers of single fetus get pre-eclampsia, but the association between type of pregnancy and incidence of pre-eclampsia wasn't significant (P>0.05). In addition, a significant correlation was found between the parity of the mothers and incidence of pre-eclampsia. Regarding the clinical presentation, we found foot and hand edema in 65% of the preeclampsia cases but As regards the pre-eclampsia complications among the studied cases, premature labor was found in 50% of the cases, placental abruption in 35.5%, intrauterine growth retardation in 16.1%.
Conclusion: in Arar, KSA, Pre-eclampsia was found in 20.7% of the total number of participants which considered a relatively high prevalence. So, we recommend more detailed future studies to be undertaken in more detailed ways and over larger sample. Also health education about pre-eclampsia and eclampsia and their complications should be provided to the pregnant mothers.