Support during pregnancy for women at increased risk of low birthweight babies

Interventions consisting of support (defined as advice and counseling about health-related behaviors, tangible and emotional support) to pregnant women at risk of having a low birth weight (LBW) baby have not been able to positively modify maternal or perinatal health outcomes, including birth weight. However, after the inclusion of some new trials the most recent systematic review shows a marginal statistically significant effect on the likelihood of having a caesarean section (CS) (RR: 0.88; 95% CI: 0,79 to 0,99) and a statistically significant increase on the likelihood of elective termination of pregnancy. Furthermore, a few studies demonstrated some positive impact on mothers psychosocial conditions.

In this review, all appropriately controlled trials that could be identified were included and analyzed. Trials that focused only on educational interventions or brief interventions that did not go until the birth of the baby were excluded from the review, as well as trials in which allocation concealment was not used and those that did not have outcome data from at least 80% of subjects that were randomized.

The full RHL commentary also includes sections on: