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CME Credit Offered
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Poster Session 2

(579) Obesity and weight gain: How are the SMFM Annual Meetings weighing in?

Thursday, January 30, 2025
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM  
Objective: Obesity and weight gain are commonly understood risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) Annual Meeting is one of the primary venues for high impact research on this topic. We sought to determine whether scientific presentations regarding obesity were focused on interventions to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes versus identification of risk factors.

Study Design: This is a descriptive study of abstract submissions related to obesity from the 2020 to 2024 SMFM Annual Meetings. Two independent researchers searched abstract titles with the following terms: “obesity”, “obese”, “weight gain”, “habitus”, “overweight”, “body mass index”, and “BMI”. The abstracts were then reviewed to determine if obesity was studied as a risk factor or if a clinical intervention was evaluated for the management of patients with obesity. Abstracts with multiple search terms in the title were only analyzed once and redundancies were eliminated. Only human studies were eligible for inclusion. The categorization of each abstract was compared and if a discrepancy arose a third-party independent researcher provided final designation.

Results: Of the 6,023 abstracts presented at SMFM from 2020 to 2024, 254 (4.2%) were regarding obesity and weight gain and met criteria for inclusion. There were no abstracts with “habitus” or “overweight” in the title. 38 (15%) abstracts focused on interventions related to obesity and weight gain. 216 (85%) abstracts concentrated on obesity as a risk factor. 16 (6.3%) abstracts were oral presentations, of which eight featured interventions. Abstract categorization by year was assessed (Table 1).

Conclusion: Obesity is a well-studied risk factor in perinatal outcomes, yet studies of interventions that aim to mitigate obesity-related morbidity represent a minority of presented science on this topic. Further studies directed towards interventions and protocols to improve care surrounding obesity and weight gain are needed.