Viral hepatitis complicating pregnancy--a five year hospital based retrospective study.

Limited data are available on viral hepatitis (VH) complicating pregnancy from Sri Lanka. We retrospectively studied all pregnant and non-pregnant women of child bearing age, who were admitted with VH to the Teaching Hospital Peradeniya between January 1987 and December 1991. During this period, there were 187 cases of icteric VH among non-pregnant women of child bearing age, but only 10 cases among pregnant women (hospital incidence of 0.35 cases of VH per 1000 pregnancy related admissions). Two of the 10 (case fatality 20%) pregnant women died of causes related to VH compared with only 3 of the 187 (1.6%) non-pregnant women (p < 0.001), giving a relative risk of death due to VH in pregnant women of 12.5 (95% confidence limits 1.8-85.6). The perinatal case fatality rate due to VH was 20%. VH complicating pregnancy does not appear to be a common cause of hospital admission, but pregnancy makes death due to VH more likely. VH complicating pregnancy also results in a high perinatal mortality.