Respiratory Tract Infections in Pregnant Women in Iraq: A Study of 140 Female Patients
Keywords:
Pregnancy, Respiratory Tract Infections, PneumoniaAbstract
RTIs represent the most prevalent illnesses which occur during pregnancy, which our study had focused to the impact of respiratory tract infections on both mothers and newborns.
In our study's methodology, our study enrolled a data of 140 pregnant women who received RTI diagnoses at different hospitals in Iraq between May 2024 and May 2025, where collected a clinical and demographics variables of participants as well as included symptoms, diagnostic results, treatment approaches, and maternal complications and newborn results, that our study was divided data of patients with respiratory tract infections into two groups, where upper URTI (n=92) and lower LRTI (n=48).
Based on clinical outcomes of patients, our outcomes found URTI affected 65.7% of patients (n=92) through pharyngotonsillitis and rhinosinusitis, while LRTI (bronchitis or pneumonia) affected 34.3% of patients (n=48), which the need for hospital admission reached 13.6% of patients, but LRTI patients needed hospitalization at a rate of 31.3% compared to 4.3% for URTI patients, as well as the LRTI group experienced a significantly higher rate of preterm births at 18.8% compared to the URTI group at 7.6%, due to that this study showed that lower respiratory tract infections during pregnancy lead to serious maternal health issues, hospitalization, and premature birth in pregnant women.
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