Fetal Tobacco Syndrome and Perinatal Outcome

Abstract

Our study confirmed that pregnancy burdened with smoking, especially in the case of >20 cigarettes a day, is associated with a high risk due to the development of maternal anemia and fetal hypoxia and polyglobulia, which in turn result in a significantly poorer perinatal outcome in infants born to smoking mothers and compromised subsequent development of the child, as evidenced by the morphological substrates on the brain resulting from the fetal mechanism of defense against hypoxia. Clinically, there was no other (etiologic) reason for (chronic) fetal hypoxia; thus, the clinical substrate of fetal tobacco syndrome could be presumed to have developed consequentially to chronic smoking during pregnancy, as a preuterine factor of fetal hypoxia. Other gestational or gestation-related diseases (e.g., gestosis, diabetes) that may potentially cause nutritional and respiratory insufficiency of the placenta were ruled out.