Abstract
Objective: To estimate the direct healthcare cost of being overweight or obese throughout pregnancy to the National Health Service in Wales. Design: Retrospective prevalence-based study. Setting: Combined linked anonymised electronic datasets gathered on a cohort of women enrolled on the Growing Up in Wales: Environments for Healthy Living (EHL) study. Women were categorised into two groups: normal body mass index (BMI; n=260) and overweight/obese (BMI>25; n=224). Participants: 484 singleton pregnancies with available health service records and an antenatal BMI. Primary outcome measure: Total health service utilisation (comprising all general practitioner visits and prescribed medications, inpatient admissions and outpatient visits) and direct healthcare costs for providing these services in the year 2011?2012. Costs are calculated as cost of mother (no infant costs are included) and are related to health service usage throughout pregnancy and 2 months following delivery. Results: There was a strong association between healthcare usage cost and BMI ( p
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e003983 |
| Journal | BMJ Open |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 27 Feb 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding: Swansea University and NISCHR.Acknowledgments: The work was supported by NISCHR and Swansea University. This study makes use of anonymised data held in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) system, which is part of the national e-health records research infrastructure for Wales. The authors would like to acknowledge all the data providers who make anonymised data available for research. This work is also part of the ‘Growing Up in Wales: EHL’ study.
