Abstract
BackgroundWith the increase of the number of smokers, tobacco exposure among pregnant women is becoming more and more common. Pregnant women exposed to first-hand smoke and second-hand smoke are susceptible to physiological and psychological health issues has been proved in previous studies. Nevertheless, there are no enough studies focus on the impact of third-hand smoke during pregnancy. This study aimed to assess and compare health-related quality of life for pregnant women with exposure to first-hand smoke, second-hand smoke, third-hand smoke and non-exposure to tobacco in mainland China.MethodsNational-based cross-sectional study is based on a questionnaire survey which collects information including demographics, smoking behaviors and self-evaluation. All questionnaires were delivered and collected from August to September 2019. EuroQol group’s visual analog scale and EuroQoL Five-dimension Questionnaire were used to collect data in mainland China.ResultsTotally, 15,682 pregnant women were included in this study, among which non-exposure to smoke were 7564 (48.2%), exposed to first-hand smoke, second-hand smoke and third-hand smoke were 89 (0.6%), 2349 (15.0%), and 5680 (36.2%) respectively. Pregnant women without tobacco exposure had the highest EuroQol group’s visual analog scale score (mean value = 85.4[SD = 14.0]), while those with first-hand smoke had the lowest score (mean value = 77.4[SD = 22.2]). Among all five dimensions of EuroQoL Five-dimension Questionnaire, there were significant differences of EQ-index among groups with different tobacco exposure in usual activity and anxiety or depression dimensions (p < 0.001).ConclusionsThird-hand smoke exposure had close relationship with low health-related quality of life in pregnant women. Moreover, second-hand smoke exposure significantly led more problems on mental dimension of pregnant women.
Highlights
With the increase of the number of smokers, tobacco exposure among pregnant women is becoming more and more common
Considering the importance above, this study aimed to investigate the Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of pregnant women exposed to first-hand smoke (FHS), second-hand smoke (SHS) and third-hand smoke (THS) and compare impacts of different tobacco exposure during pregnancy since previous studies on THS is not enough
EQ-5D-5L consists of the EuroQoL Fivedimension Questionnaire (EQ-5D) and EuroQol group’s visual analog scale (EQ-VAS), which is an instrumental questionnaire developed in Europe was used to evaluate the general HRQoL of the people [27, 28]
Summary
With the increase of the number of smokers, tobacco exposure among pregnant women is becoming more and more common. Pregnant women exposed to first-hand smoke and second-hand smoke are susceptible to physiological and psychological health issues has been proved in previous studies. Cardiovascular diseases and cancer are the common complications caused by active first-hand smoke (FHS) [4,5,6,7]. Except for FHS, second-hand smoke (SHS) and third-hand smoke (THS) are two common ways of passive tobacco exposure [8, 9]. SHS contributes to variable diseases as grave as FHS, and caused an additional deaths of 1.2 million people annually [1]. SHS could be avoided by multiple ways for non-smokers, THS is much difficult be avoided because THS indicates residual tobacco smoke and particles deposited on surfaces of subjects and dust which may remain for more than one and half years after smoking [10]
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