Early hospital discharge and early puerperal complications

Abstract EN

The study aimed to evaluate the association between the time of postpartum dis-charge and symptoms indicative of complications during the first postpartum week.

The cross-sectional study included 753 women with vaginal delivery at Al-Jamhorya teaching public hospital without complications were interviewed before the hospital discharge and sev-en days after.

The time of postpartum discharge was classified as early (≤24hours) or late (>24hours).

A total of 753 mothers were enrolled in the study.

The majority (94.3%) of the mothers stayed in the hospital ≤24hours, 4.1% >24hours, and 1.6 % were discharged against medical advice.

The mean duration of hospital stay was 12.1±6.1 hours, with a minimum hos-pital stay of 2 hours and a maximum stay of 46 hours.

The prenatal care was satisfactory in 91.2%.

Prenatal care was satisfactory in 91% of early discharge mothers and 93.5% in the late group.

This slight difference was not statistically significant.

After delivery, 8.4% had urinary tract infections.

Urinary tract infection after delivery occurred in 8.2% of mothers with early discharge and 12.9 % in mothers with late discharge.

This difference was not statistically sig-nificant.

Complications of episiotomy were recorded in 79.9% of mothers with early dis-charge and 61.3% in late discharge.

This difference was statistically significant.

The study’s conclusions indicated that late discharge mothers had received anesthesia and performed epi-siotomy more than early discharge mothers.

Complications of episiotomy were recorded more in mothers with early discharge than in late discharged mothers.

It is recommended that a ran-domized clinical trial is best to evaluate the association between the time of discharge postpar-tum and the presence of complications, also to attain safety and possible benefits of shorter hospital stay.