Introduction: Snoring is a common symptom of Sleep disordered breathing (SDB), a condition that is present in 4% of the general population. SDB is identified by snoring and/or repetitive cessation of breathing during sleep and has been found to be associated with hypertension, stroke and heart attack. There is not depth of knowledge examining the association between SDB and pregnancy outcomes.
Aim: To examine the prevalence of self reported snoring in pregnancy and the potential association between self reported snoring and the development of Hypertensive disorders of Pregnancy (HDP) within a larger cohort from a prevalence of SDB in pregnancy Study
Methods: questionnaires were administered to pregnant women attending an outpatient’s antenatal clinic.
The self reported snoring is a component of the Berlin score. Pregnancy progression and outcome data were collected on all participants and analyse by IBM SPSS v.20™ utilising chi-square analysis, student T test and logistic regression analysis. HDP diagnoses were in alignment with the SOMANZ (2009) diagnostic criteria
Results: Questionnaires were administered and outcomes collected on 2023 pregnancies. Snoring was reported by 49.2% of women. HDP affected 10.1% of the cohort, 3.3% of whom were preeclamptic. Of the pregnancies affected by HDP self reported snoring occurred in 57.7% in comparison to 43.3% who do not report snoring (p< 0.001).
Conclusion: This would indicate that there is an association between self reported snoring and the development of HDP. Further analysis will be undertaken to model the effect of other potential risk factors such as maternal age, parity, pre-pregnancy BMI and other co morbidities.