Obstetrics and Neonatal Outcomes in Pregnant Women with COVID-19: A Systematic Review

Considering that the obstetricians and pediatricians need to comprehensive information about the obstetric and neonatal effect of COVID-19, this review study was conducted to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on obstetrics and neonatal outcomes.

In this systematic review the international search databases following PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest and Embase and Google scholar were searched. All articles were reviewed by two independent researchers until 10 April 2020. After quality assessment of included studies the finding reported in 2 sections obstetrics and neonatal outcomes.

The sixteen studies with a sample size of 123 pregnant women with a definitive diagnosis of COVID-19 and their neonates were evaluated. The range of gestational age was 25-40 weeks. There was no death associated with COVID-19 in pregnant women. The obstetric outcomes in pregnant women with COVID-19 include decreased fetal movement, intrauterine fetal distress, anemia, PROM, preterm labor, Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome (MODS) and etc. The most common delivery mode in women affect with COVID-19 was cesarean section. Expect for one case with MODS, in the majority of the studies reviewed, no severe morbidity or mortality occurred. The neonatal outcomes were stillbirth, prematurity, asphyxia, fetal distress, low birth weight, small for gestational age, large for gestational age, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, disseminated intravascular coagulation and neonatal death. In addition, five neonates born to mothers with COVID-19 were positive for SARS-CoV-2. However, the studies report these outcomes but the exact causes of theme are not known.

In this systematic review, we summarize the diverse results of studies about the obstetrics and neonatal outcomes following COVID-19. This infection may cause negative outcomes in both mothers and neonates. However, there were evidence about neonate infected with COVID-19, but there is controversial information about the vertical transmission of COVID-19.