Prevalence of Gestational Diabetes and Its Relation with Maternal-Infant Health

Aim: This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus and maternal-infant health. Material and Methods: The study was performed as analytical-cross sectional with 491 women who had given birth to their babies at ？zmir Tepecik Training and Research Hospital between June 2015 and September 2016. Data were obtained by means of a questionnaire by the researcher. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, Chi-square, Student-t and Mann-Whitney U tests were used. Results: It was determined that 8.1% women who had participated the study was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. It was found out that the prevalence of gestational diabetes was statistically and significantly seen higher between 25-45 ages (c2=18.232; p<0.001) and also in secondary obese people (c2=12.457; p=0.014). In addition, it was established that gestational diabetes was more frequently observed in women with diabetes history in their previous pregnancies (7.5% vs. 1.1%; c2=5.801; p=0.016) and family history (75.0% vs. 22.0%; c2=53.379; p<0.001) and in those with over 4000 gr baby delivery (12.5% vs. 2.2%; c2=9.878; p=0.002) and these differences were statistically significant. It was seen that women with gestational diabetes (27.5%) were more hospitalized than those without gestational diabetes (8.9%) (c2=11.773; p<0.001). It was also identified that the newborns of women with gestational diabetes had higher body weight (3345.88±588.43) and their average chest girth (34.03±1.61) and these differences were statistically important (respectively t=2.119; p=0.035 and t=2.662; p=0.009). Conclusions: It was understood in this study that gestational diabetes rate was high and this situation increased hospitalization rate during pregnancy and anthropometric measurements of babies. Health professionals should inform all pregnant women about gestational diabetes including those with high gestational diabetes risk, provide screening test for early diagnosis, teach healthy life style behaviour to women diagnosed with diabetes and in this way, they can contribute to maternal-infant health