The effects of smoking cessation and a programme intervention on birth and other perinatal outcomes among rural pregnant smokers

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perinatal outcomes of rural pregnant smokers enrolled in the Smoke Free Baby & Me trial. Methods: Data on smoking status and other pre-natal variables were collected during pregnancy. Outcomes were retrieved from a review of hospital records of 161 singleton births (79 from the control group, 82 from the intervention group). Results: The results show that, after adjusting for gender and gestational age, the more self-reported cigarettes at the first pre-natal visit, the less the infant birth weight (p = 0.033), the less maternal weight gain (p = 0.042) and the shorter the labour length (p = 0.041). Infants of women with positive urinary cotinine at the first pre-natal visit in the intervention group had higher 1 minute Apgar scores than those with negative cotinine (p = 0.022). Smokers also had a preponderance of male infants (64% vs 36%), while non-smokers had more females (59% vs 41%) (p = 0.006). Conclusions: Smoking during pregnancy affects perinatal outcomes. Assuming a foetal origin of chronic disease morbidity, implementing smoking cessation during pregnancy would not only improve maternal and foetal health, but also might contribute to an improvement in the incidence of adult chronic disease morbidity.