The Impact of the Place of Delivery, Type of Birth and Number of Antenatal Visits on the Apgar Score.

The Apgar score is applied immediately after birth to clinically evaluate the newborn, at the first and fifth minutes of life. The Apgar score can help diagnose scenarios of neonatal anoxia or hypoxia. This is a retrospective, descriptive, and analytical study that used secondary data from DATASUS (Department of Informatics of the Unified Health System), from 1994 to 2018. The studied population includes all live births in Brazil during this period. The inclusion criteria were pregnant women over 15 years old, and the exclusion criteria were multiple pregnancies, pregnancies lasting less than 37 weeks, and newborns with congenital anomalies. These criteria were established to reduce potential confounding factors in the analysis that could lead to errors in interpretation of the results. The variables studied were place of delivery, type of delivery, and number of prenatal consultations. As results, having 7 or more prenatal consultations is a protective factor for alterations in the Apgar score, as well as cesarean delivery and hospital delivery. It was observed that pregnancy care, regarding the studied variables, influences the Apgar score. However, future studies in different populations are necessary to confirm these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]