Comparison of Perinatal Outcomes for Women With and Without Epilepsy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

IMPORTANCE: Pregnant women who have epilepsy need adequate engagement, information, and pregnancy planning and management to improve pregnancy outcomes. OBJECTIVE: To investigate perinatal outcomes in women with epilepsy compared with women without epilepsy. DATA SOURCES: Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and PsycINFO were searched with no language or date restrictions (database inception through December 6, 2022). Searches also included OpenGrey and Google Scholar and manual searching in journals and reference lists of included studies. STUDY SELECTION: All observational studies comparing women with and without epilepsy were included. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: The PRISMA checklist was used for abstracting data and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for risk-of-bias assessment. Data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment were done independently by 2 authors with mediation conducted independently by a third author. Pooled unadjusted odds ratios (OR) or mean differences were reported with 95% CI from random-effects (I2 heterogeneity statistic >50%) or fixed-effects (I2