More than four in every five women continue to drink alcohol and close to half continue to smoke during pregnancy, according to research published yesterday.
The study, conducted among women attending Dublin's Rotunda Hospital, was a cause for concern, according to one of its authors, Dr Tom Walsh, a lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Rotunda and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He said the rates were much higher than expected.
A total of 163 pregnant women were interviewed for the research and 62 per cent said they were not aware of the risks alcohol posed to their baby. Some 85 per cent of them continued to drink during pregnancy.
Dr Walsh said drinking more than 15 units of alcohol per week was associated with miscarriage and low birth weight. Drinking more than 20 units a week is associated with intellectual impairment of the unborn child.
Dr Walsh added that smoking even one cigarette a day during pregnancy posed risks to the unborn child. Some 44 per cent of those interviewed were smoking.
"Smoking during pregnancy is associated with miscarriage, stillbirth, pre-term delivery, low birth weight and placental abruption. It is also associated with a higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome and reduced lung function in later life," Dr Walsh said.
He said the 2002 national health and lifestyle surveys put the percentage of smokers in the population at 27 per cent, but this latest research put the incidence of smoking among pregnant women at 17 percentage points higher. "This is of concern," he said. He pointed out however, that the results could be biased due to the fact that the population studied were recruited from public outpatient clinics. "A large proportion of these patients would be from a lower socio-economic group," he said.
Another project displayed at the Royal College of Surgeons yesterday examined whether alcohol consumption and smoking affected IVF treatment. Some 40 couples who attended the Human Assisted Reproduction Ireland unit at the Rotunda in the first quarter of 2003 were looked at. No consistent relationship was found between alcohol intake on sperm count in men or alcohol intake on oocyte number and quality. However, smoking did appear to have a negative effect on achieving a pregnancy.