Prevalence of Pelvic Girdle Pain in Pregnancy: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Pregnancy is an exciting, unique, and usually one of the happiest moments in a woman’s life. It highlights the woman’s amazing creative and nurturing powers while providing a bridge to the future. It is a state of having implanted products of conception located in the uterus. Database search was conducted, using the MeSH terms “Pelvic girdle pain,” “prevalence,” “trimester,” and “pregnancy” for relevant peer-reviewed articles. Google Scholar, Science Direct (Elsevier), Scopus, CINAHL, Cochrane Library (Wiley), Healthcare Journals, Medline/PubMed, and Google were the areas of the database search. Out of 817 articles, ineligible studies were excluded after initial manual title and abstract screening. Only 55 studies which were full articles were retrieved. Of them, 19 fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The prevalence rates varied from 4% to 76% globally based on the country and ethnicity. The causes and concerns leading to pelvic girdle pain (PGP) were described. The complications pertaining to PGP in pregnancy were stated. When compared globally we could retrieve only one Indian study which directs our attention toward need for documentation and publishing of Indian findings. PGP in pregnancy is found to be a universal and disabling issue that needs to be addressed.