The young pregnant teenager. Impact of comprehensive prenatal care.

Pregnant teenagers under the age of 15 years are known to be at highest risk for delivering low-birth-weight infants, particularly poor black girls. Sixty-seven inner-city pregnant adolescent girls 15 years or less at the time of delivery were followed in a special Teen Obstetric Clinic staffed by an interdisciplinary team trained in adolescent and prenatal health care. Ninety-three percent of the clinic population was black. The fetal outcomes of these girls were compared with the fetal outcomes of 67 girls who attended the regular obstetric clinic. Girls were matched for age at delivery, race, socioeconomic status, and parity. Only 9.0% of the infants of the teenagers in the Teen Obstetric Clinic group weighed less than 2500 g, compared with 20.9% of the infants of the girls in the regular Obstetric Clinic group. This finding has implications for the type of prenatal care provided to young adolescents.