Abstract
Background: Pregnancy is a physiological process and should ideally yield no morbidity and mortality; however, in some instances, pregnancy becomes a high-risk. A high-risk pregnancy carries significant danger to the fetus and mother before, during and after delivery. The objective of the study was to determine the perinatal outcome among women with high-risk pregnancies.
 Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted from June to December 2015, including 287 women with high-risk pregnancies scheduled to undergo delivery at Liaquat University Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. Data pertaining to sociodemographic details, gestational, obstetric history, Apgar score and the perinatal outcome was recorded using a pre-structured questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0..
 Results: The mean age of the enrolled participants was 29.12 ± 5.46 years. The perinatal outcomes included stillbirths (8%), early neonatal deaths (4.2%), low birth weight (22.6%) and poor Apgar score i.e., < 7 at 1 minute (10.5%) and 5 minutes (3.8%). Stratification revealed a significant risk of poor perinatal outcome (low birth weight) among women aged above 30 years (p-value = 0.002).
 Conclusion: It is concluded from the study results that high-risk pregnancies yield poor perinatal outcomes, including stillbirths, low birth weight, early neonatal death and poor Apgar scores.
Highlights
Being a developing country with limited resources, Pakistan faces many challenges, with the healthcare sector
Since high-risk pregnancies are more likely to yield poor perinatal outcomes than normal pregnancies, we aimed to study the perinatal outcomes among women with high-risk pregnancies
A total of 287 women with high-risk pregnancies were included in this study; of them, 125(44%) were booked, and 162(56%) were un-booked
Summary
Being a developing country with limited resources, Pakistan faces many challenges, with the healthcare sector. A more recent national survey reports the perinatal mortality rate to be as high as 92 per 1000 births, with most deaths (72%) due to stillbirths[4]. These issues might be more critical in the rural areas, as we lack research concerning this particular locality[2]. The perinatal outcomes included stillbirths (8%), early neonatal deaths (4.2%), low birth weight (22.6%) and poor Apgar score i.e., < 7 at 1 minute (10.5%) and 5 minutes (3.8%). Conclusion: It is concluded from the study results that high-risk pregnancies yield poor perinatal outcomes, including stillbirths, low birth weight, early neonatal death and poor Apgar scores
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