Work as a physician and adverse pregnancy outcomes: a Finnish nationwide population-based registry study.
Work as a physician may be related to several occupational hazards. Only few studies have investigated the relations between work as a physician and the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and the results have been inconsistent. We conducted a nationwide population-based study in Finland to assess whether work as a physician during pregnancy increases the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. We identified from the 1990 to 2006 Finnish Medical Birth Register data all singleton newborns of physicians (N = 7,642) and other upper white collar workers (N = 124,606; as the reference group) from a source population of 946,392 singleton newborns. In generalized estimating equations, work as a physician was not related to low birth weight (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.00, 95% confidence interval (CI 0.86-1.15), preterm delivery (1.00, 0.89-1.12), small-for-gestational age (1.04, 0.86-1.22), large-for-gestational age (1.00, 0.86-1.13), perinatal death (0.88, 0.49-1.27), and the female gender of the newborn (0.98, 0.94-1.03). The risk of high birth weight (4,000 g or more; 0.88, 0.84-0.93) and postterm delivery were lower (0.77, 0.65-0.89) among physicians than the reference group. The results indicate that Finnish female physicians have a similar risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes as women of similar socio-economic background.
Quansah
Reginald
R
Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Gissler
Mika
M
Jaakkola
Jouni J K
JJ
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D016015:Logistic Models; D008875:Middle Aged; D010822:Physicians, Women / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D011256:Pregnancy Outcome / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012042:Registries; D012307:Risk Factors; D014931:Women, Working