Physical intimate partner violence during gestation as a risk factor for low quality of prenatal care.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate physical intimate partner violence during gestation as an independent risk factor for low quality of prenatal care.


METHODS
A cross-sectional study was carried out at three public maternity wards of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro (Southeastern Brazil). The 528 puerperal women included in the study were selected by simple random sampling from all babies born at term in 2000. Prenatal care information was collected through the pregnant woman's card and face-to-face interviews. The Kotelchuck index was employed to assess the quality of prenatal care. In order to identify violence situations, the Brazilian version of the instrument Revised Conflict Tactics Scales was used. Non-conditional logistic regression was used to assess the effect of exposure, after controlling for confounding variables.


RESULTS
Even after adjustment for socioeconomic, demographic, reproductive, and couple's lifestyle variables, physical intimate partner violence during gestation remained associated with low quality of prenatal care. Women exposed to physical violence during gestation had 2.2 times more chance of presenting inadequate prenatal care compared to those without history of physical violence.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings point to the need of identifying family conflict situations since the beginning of prenatal care in order to address the issue and enable higher adherence to follow-up among victimized pregnant women.
Moraes
Claudia Leite
CL
Departamento de Epidemiologia, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. clmoraes@ims.uerj.br
Arana
Flávia Dias Nogueira
FD
Reichenheim
Michael Eduardo
ME
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D011247:Pregnancy; D011295:Prenatal Care / Q000592:standards*; D012307:Risk Factors; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult