Características nutricionales de adolescentes embarazadas controladas en el Consultorio de adolescencia

Abstract

Antroprometric characteristics of 78 pregnant adolescents 12 to 18 years of age under care of the Adolescent Section of the Department of Obstetrics and Ginecology of the University Hospital (Universidad de Chile) are analyzed with the purpose of studying nutritional status of mothers and its relation with birthweight.
Weight and height of pregnant adolescents under standardized conditions, at the first and last prenatal visits were measured, assesing the status according to charts of the Ministry of Health; underweight < 90 %; normal 90 - 110 %; overweight ≥110 %.
Medium age was 16 ‡1.4 years and medium height was 153 ‡5.1 cm.
At the first visit, 69,2 / of the group was classified as normal, 18 / as underweight and 12,8 0/ as overweight, being these figures practically the same at the last visit.
Malnutrition was more frequent in the group 16 to 18 years.
Medium birthweight was 3.225 grams, what compares favourably with other adolescents and almost equalls birthweight for adult mothers.
Relating nutritional status of mothers, an increment of the proportion of low and insufficient birth weight is observed for underweight mothers.