Original Article: Pregnancy and Thyroid Dysfunction: Need for Universal Screening- A Pilot Study

AIM: 1. To determine Thyroid dysfunction and antiTPO antibody status in pregnant women. 2. To know the benefit of LT4 therapy in maternal pregnancy outcome (antiTPO ab+ve vs antiTPO ab-ve groups) and 3. To determine the maternal and fetal outcomes in hypothyroid pregnant women and to decide whether universal screening of pregnant women for hypothy-roidism is required or not. Materials and methods: A prospective study was done in mamata general hospital in the dept. of obg, over a period of 1 years.105 antenatal women were included in the study.Outcome in these pregnancies were observed and analysed using appro-priate statistical method.Results: There were only 3 patients with spontaneous abortions, 3 patients with pregnancy induced hypertention and only 1 patient had preterm delivery.There was more of thyroid dysfunction in anti TPO Ab +ve cases.But there was no significant adverse effect on pregnancy outcome in patients who were treated. Conclusion: Though our study included only a small number of antenatal women who were screened for thyroid abnormality since it was only a pilot study done in our hospital since our area is endemic for thyroid disor-ders due to iodine deficiency we recommend Universal screening to rule out thyroid dysfunc-tion in pregnancy because the maternal and fetal complications can be reduced by early screen-ing, diagnosing and correcting thyroid abnormality