Background: Maternal age over 35 and lower than 18 years, primiparity, certain disorders such as blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and infections have been related to weight disorders of the newborn.
Objective: To asses risks of occurrence of two birth weight diagnostic criteria: 1) low birth weight and macrosomia; 2) trophism adjusted for gestational age, considering several maternal pathologies.
Material and methods: A cross-sectional study of 316 newborns, singletons and free of malformations or congenital infections was carried out. We calculated risk of low birth weight, macrosomia, hypotrophy and hypertrophy according to the presence of the following maternal pathologies: hypertension, diabetes mellitus, infections, and other disorders. We also determined sensitivity and specificity indexes to asses the validity of the low birth weight and macrosomia criteria.
Results: For low birth weight and macrosomia we found a sensitivity of 91.7% and 53.3%, and a specificity of 86.19% and 100%, respectively. The presence of maternal hypertension and diabetes mellitus were risk factors for low birth weight (OR = 2.426; CI95% = 1.210-4.900) and macrosomia (OR = 5.143; CI95% = 1.520-17.420), respectively; these risks were not significant when the trophism criterion was used.
Conclusions: The low birth weight and macrosomia criteria over and underestimated criteria for hypotrophy and hypertrophy. According to the presence of maternal hypertension and diabetes mellitus, the risk of low birth weight and macrosomia are overestimated in relation to those seen when the trophism criterion was used.