Maternal environmental tobacco smoke exposure and adverse birth outcomes in Egypt: a cross sectional study

Objective. To study the association between exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) during pregnancy and the adverse birth outcomes in Egypt. Materials and Methods. Target population were mothers admitted to the postnatal ward of the obstetrics department of an educational hospital, giving birth to viable single neonates with or without adverse birth outcomes. The total sample size was 345, and a pre-designed pre-coded structured interviewing questionnaire in Arabic language was used to collect data from the study population within 24 hours after delivery. Results. The study revealed that mothers who reported regular exposure to ETS had two times more risk of experiencing adverse birth outcomes than mothers who reported no exposure (OR 2.0, 95%CI 1.13-3.58). Mothers who were regularly exposed to ETS during pregnancy had 1.36 times more risk of having preterm babies, two times more risk of having small for gestational age (SGA) babies and 3 times more likely to have low birth weight (LBW) babies than mothers who were not exposed to ETS (OR 1.36, 95%CI 0.59-3.09), (OR1.97, 95%CI 0.73-5.3) and (OR 2.74, 95%CI 1.38-5.46) respectively. There was no significant association between exposure to ETS during pregnancy and the risk of congenital anomalies or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) admission. Conclusions. Mothers regularly exposed to ETS had two times more risk for adverse birth outcomes compared to non-exposed. Birth weight was the only birth outcome significantly associated with gestational exposure to ETS and low birth weight was the adverse birth outcome most affected by ETS exposure.