Autoimmune rheumatic diseases (ARDs) and bariatric surgery are each risk factors for adverse birth outcomes. To date, no study has investigated their combined impact on birth outcomes.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of bariatric surgery on pregnancy outcomes in women with an ARD. As a secondary comparison, we assessed the risk of bariatric surgery on the same outcomes in women without an ARD.
Records maintained by the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
This cohort study included infants born between 20-44 weeks of gestation in California between 2011-2018. Risks of adverse pregnancy outcomes were evaluated for women with a history of bariatric surgery as compared to women without a history of bariatric surgery, stratified by ARD, using log-linear regression with a Poisson distribution.
The study included 3,574,165 infants, of whom 10,823 (0.3%) were born to women who had an ARD and 13,529 (0.38%) to women with a history of bariatric surgery. There were 155 infants born to women (0.0043%) with both an ARD and a history of bariatric surgery. In women with an ARD and without bariatric surgery, the prevalence of preterm births was 18%, compared to 17.4% in women with both ARD and bariatric surgery; in women without ARD but with prior bariatric surgery, the prevalence of preterm births was 13.7%, compared to 8.2% in women without bariatric surgery. Except for neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions, women with an ARD and history of bariatric surgery were not at a statistically increased risk of having other adverse pregnancy outcomes as compared to women with an ARD and no history of bariatric surgery.
Our study shows that women with ARD already have a high occurrence of several adverse birth outcomes, and this was not further increased by a history of bariatric surgery. The infants born to women with a history of ARD and bariatric surgery were admitted to the NICU significantly more than the infants born to women with an ARD and no history of bariatric surgery.