Poor obstetric performance of teenagers: is it age- or quality of care-related?

We studied prospectively the effect of antenatal care on the obstetric performance of teenagers seen at a university teaching hospital over a 14-month period. When the obstetric complications among the teenagers were compared to their older counterpart, there were significantly higher complication rates, especially anaemia, preterm delivery, low birth weight and neonatal admission. After controlling for utilisation of antenatal care, significant differences were observed only in the incidence of low birth weight babies. In conclusion, this study has shown that the poor obstetric outcome of teenage pregnancy is related to non-utilisation of prenatal care rather than their biological age.