TOBACCO USE IN PREGNANT WOMEN IN ECUADOR

MONTALVO, GERMAN; POLETTA, FA; GILI, JA; LÓPEZ-CAMELO, JS

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; 3rd. International Conference on Birth Defects and Disabilities in the Developing World; 2007

For Submission to: The 3rd International Conference on Birth Defects and Disabilities  in the Developing World will be held in Brazil,  Rio de Janeiro, June 17-21, 2007. -TOPIC: Surveillance Tobacco use in pregnant women in Ecuador. German Montalvo, Fernando A. Poletta, Juan Antonio Gili*, Jorge S. Lopez Camelo. Centro de Educación Médica e Investigaciones Clínicas, Av. E. Galván 4102, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Pcia de Buenos Aires, C1431FWO, Argentina, Tel.: (54-11) 4546-8200, 4545-7934. eclamc@eclamc.org. Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with oral cleft, prematurity, and intrauterine growth restriction. Knowing the profile of smoking mothers may help develop public health policies to educate the population on health smoking consequences. Aim Describe the epidemiology of tobacco use in a sample of pregnant women from 6 cities in Ecuador in order to identify possible risk groups and associated factors. Materials and methods Sample Population, Inclusion Criteria, and Informed Consent: The study protocol, consent form and questionnaire were approved by Institutional Review Boards at the Data Coordinating Centre, RTI International (RTI) and at the foreign site. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 801 pregnant women at 7 maternity hospitals which participate in the ECLAMC network in 6 cities of Ecuador: Quito, Chone, Cañar, Portoviejo, Ibarra, and Azogues. Women were screened for eligibility, which required them to be between the ages of 18 and 46 years and beyond the first trimester of pregnancy. The sample was divided in three categories of analysis according to the habit of smoking cigarettes: never smokers (NS), experimenters but not regular smokers (ES), and ever regular smokers (RS). Results Only 746 women accepted to participate (746/801, 93.1%), of those 430 (430/746, 57.6%) had ever tried a cigarette, of these women, only 7.4% (32/430) were RS and 92.6% (398/430) were ES. RS women were older (median: RS=28.5yr, NS=25.0yr), had more years of education (median: RS=12.0yr, NS=8.0yr), had a paid job (RS=56.3%, NS=28.8%) mainly at an office, were of high socioeconomic status (RS=40.6%, NS=12.8%), Caucasian ethnicity (RS=71.9%, NS=15.2%), and were residents of urban areas (RS=87.5%, NS=51.9%). Conclusion These preliminary analyses show that Ecuador has a high level of experimentation but a low regular smoker rate according to data of other countries of South America. The profile of smoking pregnant women belongs to a higher income status among the population studied.