Differences in Neonatal APGAR score and NICU Admissions between Spontaneous and Induced labour

Abstract

The clinical relevance of differences in neonatal APGAR scores and neonatal intensive care  unit (NICU) admission rates between induced and spontaneous labour remains uncertain.  Evaluating these outcomes is particularly important in local hospital populations to better  understand neonatal health and improve neonatal and  obstetric care. To examine differences in neonatal   Apgar-score categories and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions between  induced and spontaneous labour , with the original thesis data set. This was a secondary analysis of the  outcome of an existing parallel arm quasi-experimental study conducted over 6 months in 2022  in four hospital campuses of Ziauddin University, Karachi. For this original study 284 booked pregnant women with 37-42 completed weeks were selected, 142 pregnant women for each group. The original report had used either  chi-square or Fisher exact test with a significance level of p<0.05. 134/142 neonates (94.4%) had normal Apgar scores after induced labour, and 136/142 (95.8%) had normal Apgar scores after spontaneous labour, for which the three-category comparison did not differ (reported p=0.579). NICU admission occurred in 20/142 (14.1%) and 14/142 (9.9%) neonates, in induced and spontaneous labour respectively (reported p=0.273). The difference in the absolute rate of admission to NICU was 4.2 percentage points. Overall, 270/284 neonates (95.1%) had scores of 7–10 and 34/284 (12.0%) were admitted to the NICU. Neonatal Apgar score distributions and NICU admission   rates did not differ significantly between induced and spontaneous labour in this study. Further prospective research is needed to evaluate these outcomes while accounting for maternal and  obstetric risk factors.