The analysts are of the opinion that women who are smokers and pregnant should know that there is much chance their baby will be born deformed.

Information reveals that the danger for a baby being born with missing, abnormal limbs or a cleft lip is 25% more for smokers.

The physicians of University College London told that this along with more chances of miscarriage and low birth weight is a good cause to persuade women to quit.

In pregnancy, 17% of women smoke in England and Wales.

For 20s age group the data is 45%.

Even though most of the women will have a healthy baby but smoking can still cause significant risk to the unborn child.

Lost Limbs

The scientists made an estimate that in England and Wales every year many babies are born with a defect in their body duet to the smoking habit of their mother.

Approximately 3700 babies per year are born with such condition in England and Wales.

This estimation of the researchers depends on 172 research papers printed over the previous 50 years, which studied maternal smoking and birth defects.

The results from 174,000 incidents of deformity and 11.7 million healthy babies showed that smoking increases the danger of many deformities.

The instance of a baby being born with lost or malformed limbs is 26% and cleft lip or palate is 28% more probable.
The danger of clubfoot is 28% and gastrointestinal defects 27% more. Skull abnormality is 33% more probable and eye defects 25% more common. Most increase in danger of 50% was for a condition called Gastroschisis, in which parts of the stomach or intestines stick out through the skin.

Professor Allan Hackshaw, who headed the study, believes that many women who have a habit of smoking while pregnant are not aware of these risks.

“There’s still this idea among some women that if you smoke the baby will be small and that will make it easier when it comes to the delivery”.

“But what is not appreciated is that smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of defects in the child that are life-long.”

He told that few public health educational policies indicate birth defects when showing trends of smoking. It is because of indefiniteness of past over the ones directly linked.

“Now we have this evidence, advice should be more explicit about the kinds of serious defects such as deformed limbs, and facial and gastrointestinal malformations that babies of mothers who smoke during pregnancy could suffer from,” he said.

Out of 700,000 babies born every year in England and Wales, around 120,000 babies are born to smoking mothers.

Amanda Sandford of Action on Smoking and Health said: “This study shows some of the worst outcomes of smoking during pregnancy. Pregnant smokers will be shocked to learn that their nicotine habit could cause eye or limb deformities in their baby”.

“There is clearly a need to raise awareness of these risks among girls and to ensure pregnant women are given all the support they need to help them quit smoking and to stay stopped after the birth.”

Basky Thilaganathan of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists told that women who fight to quit need to reduce on how much they smoke at the least.

Professor Hackshaw said the risk was probably closely related. It means that if a women smokes more then there is much more increased danger to her unborn child.