Examining the trimester-specific effects of low gestational weight gain on birthweight: the BOSHI study

Mothers' views on mobile health in self-care for pregnancy: A step towards mobile application development

BACKGROUND

Applications for pregnancy self-care (APSC) can improve post-partum by empowering pregnant women's status quo. This study endeavored to identify the operational needs of an application (app) from the perspective of Iranian pregnant women.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In a qualitative manner, semi-structured and face-to-face interviews were conducted using an interview guide. Interviewees were pregnant women who encountered to health facilities of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences for prenatal care and were willing to be interviewed. The interviews were conducted from June 2019 to June 2021. All the recorded interviews were transcribed. The obtained data were analyzed through conventional content analysis using MAXQDA 12 (Developer: VERBI GmbH Release: 2015 Version: 12 OS: Microsoft Windows Type: Qualitative Data Analysis - Offline). Data saturation was obtained after 14 interviews. One of the researchers, as a data encoder, became acquainted with them by immersing himself in the data. After the data was first encoded and summarized, the codes were analyzed. In addition, an attempt was made to reduce the impact of researchers' experiences at different stages of the study process.

RESULTS

Based on the opinions of pregnant women, 7 main themes (nutrition, training, fatal monitoring, relaxation, health, risk factors, physical activity) and 38 sub-themes were identified for APSC development. The findings revealed that pregnant women tend to use APSC, but because they are not comprehensive, women search the Internet to answer some of their information needs.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings can be useful in developing a comprehensive pregnancy self-care mobile application that is localized based on the operational needs of pregnant women to make them capable and self-caring in controlling pre-risk situations.

Epidemiological studies regarding hypertensive disorders of pregnancy: A review

A hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP) is defined as hypertension emerging after 20 weeks of gestation and resolving up to 12 weeks post-partum, and occurs in about 5% of all pregnancies. Complications associated with HDP have poor prognoses, and maternal deaths attributable to HDP are predicted to exceed 70 000 per year worldwide. Understanding the pathogenesis and risk factors of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy is important, and they are often investigated in observational studies. Given that therapeutic interventions cannot be controlled in observed studies, it is necessary to interpret which factors correspond to exposure and which factors correspond to confounding and intermediate factors in each study. From the Babies and their parents' longitudinal observation in the Suzuki Memorial Hospital on Intrauterine period study, blood pressure in early pregnancy was not only predictive of a child's birthweight, but the trajectory was also associated with the birthweight. From the larger-scale birth cohort studies currently conducted in Japan will provide the novel potential risk factors of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and preventive strategies of them. In Japan, observational or intervention studies are just beginning to emerge. The continuation of both a distinctive cohort and a large cohort is needed, and the development of good quality intervention trials based on the results of observational studies is important.