[Experience with a screening program for gestational diabetes].

OBJECTIVE

To determine the prevalence of gestational diabetes (GD) in an outpatient clinic in northeastern Mexico.

PATIENTS: 732 consecutive pregnant women referred for prenatal care during a two-year period. INTERVENTION AND OUTCOME MEASURE: A 100 g glucose tolerance test was performed in the patients with sampling at 1, 2 and 3 hours postchallenge. The patients were classified according to the criteria of the American Diabetes Association as normal, abnormal, and a third category of those showing a single abnormal value in the tolerance test.

RESULTS

Six percent of the women (44/732) had GD and 1.4% (10/732) had one abnormal value. A comparison group was made with a subset of 44 of the 678 women who showed a normal tolerance test. No group differences were seen in parity, and age, nor in body weight gain or changes in body mass index, the latter measured in the initial and final weeks of pregnancy. Significant differences versus the normal women were seen in the GD group for cesarean births (43% vs 30%) and in macrosomy (25% vs 7%). The group with one abnormal test showed high values in cesareans (50%) and macrosomy (10%) but did not reach significant difference with the other groups.

CONCLUSIONS

GD was higher in our study than in the only paper on GD prevalence reported in Mexico (3.9%). The higher incidence of cesareans and macrosomy in GD makes it necessary to consider therapeutic interventions in these cases.