Prevalence and Determinants of Pregnancy Induced Hypertension among Women Attending Antenatal Clinic at 37 Military Hospital Accra

Abstract

Introduction

Pregnancy Induced Hypertension (PIH) is a type of hypertension associated with pregnancy. It accounts as the primary cause of mortality and morbidity among pregnant women. Many women are not informed of the existence of the condition while others have different opinion on the physiological and pathological nature of PIH and others relate the signs to superstitions. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of pregnancy induced hypertension among women attending Antenatal clinic at 37 Military Hospital in Accra.

Methods

This was a facility-based cross-sectional study which was conducted among health workers and pregnant women attending Antenatal Clinic at 37 Military Hospital in Accra. Simple random sampling method by lottery method was used to select 240 pregnant women for interview. Purposive sampling was also used to select 14 health workers on duty at the time of the survey. Data was collected using a pretested questionnaire. These questionnaires retrieved data on background information, risk factors and knowledge of participants on the management of Pregnancy Induced Hypertension. Microsoft Excel 2016 was used for data entry and STATA version IC 15.0 for Windows was used for analysis. Means and standard deviations were determined for continuous variables. Pearson chi-square test was used to determine the association between dependent and independent variables. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the strength of association of factors associated with PIH. Reported p-values in this study were two-sided with significance levels of 0.05. Results

Out of 240 women in 20 weeks or more gestation, the prevalence of PIH was 8.8%. Less than half (37.5%) of pregnant women had good knowledge on PIH and its complications. Half of health workers stated proteinuria test was done in addition to blood pressure reading to confirm whether a pregnant woman had Pregnancy Induced Hypertension. Factors associated with developing Pregnancy Induced Hypertension were advanced maternal age (AOR=1.80; 95% CI: 1.16-2.79; p=0.039), presence of Pregnancy Induced Hypertension in previous pregnancy (AOR=0.07; 95% CI: 0.01-0.35; p=0.001) and non-consumption of fatty foods (AOR=0.19; 95% CI: 0.04-0.92; p=0.040).

Conclusion Though the prevalence of Pregnancy Induced Hypertension was low, a bigger proportion of these women did not have good knowledge on the disease and its complications. The study found that women with no history of the condition had a lower risk of developing the disease for their current pregnancy. Older pregnant women were at a heightened risk of having Pregnancy Induced Hypertension while those who do not consume fatty foods were at a lower risk of the disease.