Smoking During Pregnancy Puts Infants At Death Risk.

A new  Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Surveillance Summary on trends of smoking before, during, and after pregnancy shows an overall, small declines were observed in the prevalence of smoking during pregnancy from 2000–2010.

However, high or increasing rates of smoking during pregnancy were observed among some states in the United States of America during the study period.
Nearly 11 per cent of women smoked during the last trimester of pregnancy, based on data available for 27 PRAMS (Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) sites in 2010.

Thus, an estimated 220,000 infants were exposed to tobacco in uterus.

Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk for complications such as fetal growth restriction, preterm delivery, and infant death. The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) was initiated in 1987 and is an ongoing state- and population-based surveillance system designed to monitor selected maternal behaviors and experiences that occur before, during, and after pregnancy among females who deliver live-born infants in the United States.

This report provides data on trends in smoking among women before, during, and after pregnancy from 40 sites during 2000–2010.