Prevalence of Postural Changes During Pregnancy; A Cross-sectional Study

Background: Pregnant women might experience a lot of physiological and anatomical changes, predominantly postural changes in their bodies. They often report low back pain, leg problems, pelvic girdle pain and urinary incontinence. Pain in the pelvis, lower back and neck might be due to alterations in spinal curvature and postural changes during pregnancy. Anatomical changes occur due to an increase in ligamentous laxity and because of the weight of the fetus during pregnancy. Objective: To estimate the prevalence of postural changes during pregnancy. Methods: This cross-sectional study is approved by the ethical committee of the college in which 113 pregnant women aged between 25 to 45 years were included in the study from different hospitals in Lahore Pakistan, after fulfilling the inclusion criteria using non-probability convenient sampling. Every pregnant woman was given a consent form and after signing that they filled out a questionnaire consisting of questions about their pregnancy, prenatal care, medical problems and pains during the trimester. The pain was rated on a visual analog scale and posture was assessed using a posture score sheet. Although pregnant women who had complications like pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, history of trauma, neoplasm or surgery were excluded. For baseline characteristics, percentages and frequencies were calculated. A histogram was plotted for the age variable. Results: In this study, 113 pregnant women with a mean age of 26.3±2.89 years were included. About 24.77% of pregnant females scored poor for lower back postural grading while 20.4% of pregnant females scored poor for upper back postural grading. Conclusion: This study concludes that pregnant females are more likely to develop postural changes during pregnancy due to an increase in ligamentous laxity and weight of the fetus during pregnancy. This study also suggests that the head, shoulder, spine, pelvic and hip posture tilt, head posterior position, lumbar lordosis, lumbar angle and pelvic tilt increases, although the changes and magnitudes of these posture variables are not associated with back pain.