Differences in Neonatal APGAR score and NICU Admissions between Spontaneous and Induced labour

The clinical relevance of differences in neonatal APGAR scores and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission rates between induced and spontaneous labour remains uncertain. Evaluating these outcomes is particularly important in local hospital populations to better understand neonatal health and improve neonatal and obstetric care. To examine differences in neonatal Apgar-score categories and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions between induced and spontaneous labour , with the original thesis data set. This was a secondary analysis of the outcome of an existing parallel arm quasi-experimental study conducted over 6 months in 2022 in four hospital campuses of Ziauddin University, Karachi. For this original study 284 booked pregnant women with 37-42 completed weeks were selected, 142 pregnant women for each group. The original report had used either chi-square or Fisher exact test with a significance level of p<0.05. 134/142 neonates (94.4%) had normal Apgar scores after induced labour, and 136/142 (95.8%) had normal Apgar scores after spontaneous labour, for which the three-category comparison did not differ (reported p=0.579). NICU admission occurred in 20/142 (14.1%) and 14/142 (9.9%) neonates, in induced and spontaneous labour respectively (reported p=0.273). The difference in the absolute rate of admission to NICU was 4.2 percentage points. Overall, 270/284 neonates (95.1%) had scores of 7–10 and 34/284 (12.0%) were admitted to the NICU. Neonatal Apgar score distributions and NICU admission rates did not differ significantly between induced and spontaneous labour in this study. Further prospective research is needed to evaluate these outcomes while accounting for maternal and obstetric risk factors.