A Prospective Observational Study of Maternal Outcomes in Patients with Oligohydramnios

• Snehal Shrikant Anturlikar,*  
• Haresh Arvind Desai

Abstract

Background: Amniotic fluid is present around the fetus which serves purposes like normal fetal growth, neuro-musculoskeletal development and is responsible for better fetal outcomes. Oligohydramnios is defined as a decreased amount of amniotic fluid with an amniotic fluid index (AFI) <5 cm. Borderline oligohydramnios is defined as an amniotic fluid index between 5.1 to 8 cm. L-arginine, a semi-essential amino acid is used in oligohydramnios and has been suggested to be beneficial in improving the amniotic fluid index. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective observational study undertaken in a tertiary care teaching hospital which included 70 patients diagnosed with oligohydramnios from 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023. Institutional ethics committee permission (PUIECHR/PIMSR/00/081734/5306) was taken before the collection of data. All pregnant women with singleton pregnancies diagnosed with oligohydramnios, satisfying inclusion criteria were included and data was recorded for those who received L-arginine as well as for those patients with oligohydramnios directly coming for delivery and not administered L-arginine. Results: Out of 70 patients diagnosed with oligohydramnios, 24 patients received L-arginine and 46 patients came directly for delivery and did not receive L-arginine. Out of those receiving L-arginine, the average gestational age of starting L-arginine therapy was 34.6 ± 3.3 weeks while at delivery gestational age was 35.7 ± 2.9. Hence there was an increase of 1.1 ± 0.4 weeks of gestational age at an average. The increase in AFI after treatment with L-arginine was 0.1 to 1.9 cm with a mean of 0.475 cm. Conclusion: Our study showed an increase in gestational age as well as an increase in AFI with the administration of L-arginine. A larger sample size and more such studies may help in establishing the beneficial role of L-arginine in oligohydramnios.

Keywords

Oligohydramnios, L-arginine, Maternal outcome