A five-year trend in pre-eclampsia admission and factors associated with inpatient eclampsia: a retrospective study from a resource-limited hospital in northeast Ethiopia

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the 5-year trend of pre-eclampsia admission, magnitude and factor associated with inpatient eclampsia among deliveries involving pre-eclampsia which have been attended at one of the resource-limited public hospitals in northeast Ethiopia. DESIGN: Retrospective medical record review study. SETTING: Woldia General Hospital Medical archive, Woldia town, Ethiopia. PARTICIPANTS: All antenatal admission and deliveries involving pre-eclampsia attended from 2011 to 2016 at the hospital were included in the review. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Trend of pre-eclampsia admission was determined using non-parametric Mann-Kendall correlation. Case management, clinical and patient-related factors were tested for possible association with the development of inpatient eclampsia using binary logistic regression. P value less than 0.05 considered significant. RESULT: Across the 5-year period, there were 8764 deliveries attended at the hospital’s labour and delivery ward, of them 241 (2.76%) were co-diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. The trend showed marginal decrement through years (tau-b correlation coefficient (Tb)=−0.4, p=0.035) with the highest caseload (4.4%) observed on year 2013/2014. The rate of inpatient eclampsia was 19.6 per 10 000 births and the likelihood of its occurrence among pre-eclamptic women was 7.1% (95% CI 2.7% to 11.5%). In multivariate analysis, being multigravida (adjusted OR (AOR) 0.154, 95% CI 0.029 to 0.831) and spontaneous onset of labour (AOR 5.628, 95% CI 1.1247 to 9.401) were associated with inpatient eclampsia. CONCLUSION: In the study setting, the overall magnitude of pre-eclampsia admission was comparable with the global average, but its yearly trend showed marginal decrement from 2011 to 2016. High rate of inpatient eclampsia might indicate undertreatment which alarms further study and/or corrective measures. Waiting for spontaneous onset of labour could increase the risk of developing inpatient eclampsia whereas neither type of anticonvulsant nor duration of its usage has made significant association.