The Effects of Smoking During Pregnancy - Essay Example

The Effects of Smoking During Pregnancy Introduction: Cigarette smoking affects a pregnant women's health and the health of an unborn child. Tobacco smoking has been shown to have a carcinogenic effect on various organs, and maternal smoking during pregnancy is detrimental to both the mother and fetus, increasing the risk of intrauterine growth retardation, obstetric complications and adverse health effects. Maternal smoking during pregnancy affects foetal growth and birth weight, causes spontaneous abortion, abnormal bleeding during pregnancy, premature detachment of the placenta, premature rupture of the membranes and perinatal mortality. Smoking in the second and third trimesters of the pregnancy seems to cause these complications. Babies born to smoking pregnant women are on average 200 grams lighter than babies born to non-smoking mothers because of the reduction of placental blood flow that results in a reduction in the nutrient level reaching the foetus.Reduced birth weight increases the risks of diseases and infant death. Foetal miscarriage has been found to be higher in such smoking women. Maternal smoking also induces preterm births. Breastfeeding women who smoke have been found to have lower levels of prolactin, which is essential for the breastfeeding and thus causes reduced breastfeed. Smoking in pregnancy seems to have an adverse on the physical growth and intellectual development of the childassociated with a reduced height and intellectual attainments. A literature Review: A recent study to examine if smoking during pregnancy has an influence on the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessed with questionnaires for a population-based sample of twins found that maternal smoking during pregnancy has an environmentally mediated association with offspring ADHD symptoms (Anita Thapar et.al, 2003).A research study to compare long term outcomes of a randomised controlled trial of anti-smoking education in pregnancy and to examine the same outcomes according to maternal pregnancy smoking behaviour by psychological assessment of children born to smoking mothers confirmed differences in birthweight and height, IQ or neurological soft signs between the intervention and control groups. Differences were found for height and IQ according to mothers pregnancy smoking behaviour (MacArthur,2001).The effect of maternal smoking on neonatal lung function has been demonstrated in a study and has shown that maternal smoking has been associated with increased wheeze in early life and in schoolchildren. The study has concluded that these adverse health effects on the lungs are on account of detrimental changes before birth (Le Souf, 2006). A study conducted to demonstrate the association between smoking during pregnancy and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) using prospectively collected data has shown that children of smokers had more than three times the risk of SIDS compared with children of non-smokers (OR=3.5; 95% CI 1.4-8.7), and the risk of SIDS increased with the number of cigarettes smoked per day (p Read More