Comparison of Maternal and Fetal Outcomes Between Obese and Non-Obese Women

 Submission: 05 December 2025 | Acceptance: 29 December 2025 | Publication: 14 January 2026

 1Ayesha Ali Shah, 2Sadaf Nawaz, 3Shumaila, 4Ambreen Naz, 5Nusrat Jameel, 6Shabana Ramzan, 7Raishem

1PG Trainee (FCPS), PUMHS, Specialty: OBGYN

2FCPS, PUMHS, Specialty: OBGYN

3FCPS, SRMC, Specialty: OBGYN

4Assistant Professor, FCPS, UMDC, Specialty: OBGYN

5Senior Registrar, SRMC, Specialty: OBGYN

6MBBS, FCPS, PUMHS, Specialty: OBGYN

7FCPS, PUMHS, Specialty: OBGYN

 Vol: 16/03, 511-525

 

ABSTRACT

Background: Maternal obesity is an emerging issue in the world, and it is becoming a common issue among women in their reproductive years. Pregnant obesity is a problem with major metabolic, hypertensive and obstetric complications that do not benefit the mother and fetus in any way. Oversaturation of adiposity leads to insulin resistance in the body, inflammation of the system, and dysfunction of endothelium, which predisposes to pregnancy complications. In spite of a significant international evidence, current local statistics on low- and middle-income settings are low.

Objective: To compare maternal and fetal outcomes in obese pregnant women and non-obese pregnant women.

Methodology: The proposed cohort study took place in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Peoples Medical University/Civil Hospital, Nawabshah. One hundred seventy-two (172) pregnant women who have gestational age of more than 24 weeks isrecruited by non-probability consecutive sampling and divided into obese and non-obese groups (BMI of 30kg/m 2 and below). The participants were tracked until delivery. The maternal outcomes are measured were gestational diabetes mellitus, pre-eclampsia, cesarean section, and postpartum hemorrhage. The outcomes of fetuses is  preterm birth, low birth weights, intrauterine growth retardation, low Apgar score in the first 5 minutes after birth, and neonatal intensive care unit admission. The SPSS version 25.0 is used for analysis of the data. Comparison done using Chisquare test and relative risk are computed where a p-value less than 0.05 is regarded as significant. Expected Results: It is observed that obese pregnant women have a very high rate of poor maternal and fetal outcomes in contrast to non-obese women.

Conclusion: It is expected that maternal obesity has quite a close relationship with the adverse fetomaternal outcome, which explains the need to focus on preconception education, its early detection, and more efficient antenatal care to minimize obesity-related pregnancy complications.

Keywords: Obesity in the mother; BMI; Pregnancy outcome; Fetal outcome; Pre-eclampsia; Gestational diabetes mellitus.