الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The present study aim was to study the epidemiological characteristics of women with preterm birth, to determine the impact of various selected risk factors that were suspected as contributors to preterm delivery, and to estimate the probabilities of occurrence of these factors.
To accomplish these aims, Case-Control epidemiological design was chosen where 200 incident preterm labor cases (any labor between 22 and 37 completed weeks of gestation) who delivered in El Shatby Maternity Hospital. Data were obtained from the delivery theater and the postpartal ward. In addition, 200 controls who had full term births. Six months (May to October 2013) were spent in the field work to collect data from both cases and controls. A predesigned interviewing format was used for both cases and controls.
In the present work some variables were found to be significant risk factors for PTB. These were the extreme maternal age, low educational level, low socioeconomic status(residence, extended type of family, high crowding index), personal habits(smoking of father, caffeine consumption), parental consanguinity, past medical history of some diseases, gynecological problems specially uterine abnormalities and cervical incompetence, obstetric conditions including gravidity, parity, short spacing between pregnancies, history of previous preterm delivery, history of previous abortion, threatened abortion in current pregnancy, lack of antenatal care, some obstetric complications especially hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, antepartum hemorrhage, gestational diabetes, anemia and fetal malpresentation, finally history of severe psychological stressful conditions.
The variables that were found to be insignificant were the marital status, employment, monthly income, smoking habit of mothers, past medical history of renal disease, liver disease, menstrual history, history of still birth and neonatal deaths, fetal factors as gender, minor congenital anomalies, history of late coitus and history of ectopic pregnancy.
We recommend motivation of mothers to seek regular ANC and to improve the quality of ANC, also we recommend for further research on a large number of population to study risk assessment and long term consequences of preterm birth.