Association of Maternal Risk Factors to Congenital Anomalies among Infants: A Community Based Study in Rural Areas of Haryana, India.

Objectives: The present study was aimed at assessing Association of Maternal Risk Factors to congenital anomalies of infants.

Material and Methods: This community based retrospective and cross-sectional study was carried out in 23 rural sub-centres of block Beri, district Jhajjar (Haryana, India) among 920 mothers. A predesigned pretested semistructured questionnaire was used to collect information. Univariate analysis along with logistic regression analysis was performed.

Results: The prevalence of congenitally malformations was 1.2%. Most common congenital malformations were cleft lip/palate (18.18%) and hydrocephalus (18.18%). Mothers with < 3 years gap between pregnancies had higher prevalence (1.7%) of congenital malformations in live births. Mothers with previous history of congenital malformation (8.3%) and abortions (13.6%) had higher prevalence of congenitally malformed babies with 2.6 and 4 times higher odds of having a malformed baby.

Conclusion: The study concluded that mothers with risk factors like extreme of ages, illiteracy, bad obstetric history, history of previous congenitally malformed baby are at increased risk of fetal congenital malformation.