Maternal and Neonatal Outcomes in Infected Pregnant Women with Coronavirus: A Systematic Review

Novel coronavirusease 2019 (Covid-19) started in China and caused unexplained pneumonia. The risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes increase in respiratory viral infection during pregnancy. This systematic review was performed to investigate the maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women infected with Covid-19.

In this systematic review, the international databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, PsycINFO, Google scholar) as well as national databases (SID and Magiran) were searched to find out the articles published from 1 September 2020 to 30  April 2021 regarding maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women infected with Covid-19. Keywords were selected based on Mesh (“Pregnancy”, “Gravidity”, “Delivery”, “Infant”, “Newborn”, “Neonate”, “Outcome”, “Complication”, “Abortion”, “Obstetric Labor, Premature”, “Cesarean Section”, “Fetal Death”, “Infant, Premature”, “Coronavirus Infection”, “COVIDK19”). The full texts of articles were reviewed by two independent reviewers and the relevant data was extracted.

20 studies including 78 pregnant women entered in this review. All women were at third trimester of pregnancy except 2 cases who were less than 28 weeks. The most prevalent clinical symptoms were fever, cough and sore throat. The most common maternal outcomes were intrauterine distress, rupture of membranes and preterm delivery. Most infants delivered by cesarean section. The most common neonatal complications were prematurity, small for gestational age, fetal distress, low birth weight and bacterial pneumonia.

In this systematic review, we found some evidence to suggest that COVID-19 pneumonia causes negative maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women infected with Covid-19.