NEW YORK, Mar 27 (Reuters Health) - Women who are physically abused are likely to suffer abuse while pregnant and after their child is born, according to results of a study.

Despite the abuse, these women still attend routine checkups for their infants, Dr. Sandra L. Martin of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in Chapel Hill, and colleagues point out. These well-baby checkups pose an opportunity for healthcare professionals to intervene and offer assistance to these women, the researchers note.

Martin's team surveyed 2,648 North Carolina mothers approximately 4 months after they had a baby. The women answered a variety of questions about physical abuse before, during, and after their pregnancy.

The study, published in the March 28th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, reports that the abuse rates after giving birth were slightly more than 3% among the women who participated in the study.

"It is important to note that (the low rate of abuse reported in the study) translates into abuse of more than 3,000 new mothers annually in North Carolina," Martin and colleagues write.

Roughly 7% of the women experienced physical harm during the year prior to becoming pregnant and about 6% of the women were abused during the 9 months of their pregnancy, the report indicates. Instances of abuse were committed by former or current husbands or partners in roughly three-fourths of the cases, according to the study.

"These findings should alert health practitioners that women who are physically abused before and/or during pregnancy often continue to experience abuse after infant delivery, placing the health of both mother and child in jeopardy," the authors conclude.

"There is a clear-cut gap in screening women for intimate partner abuse in the immediate postnatal period," Drs. Robert S. Thompson and Richard Krugman of the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington, write in an accompanying editorial.

The findings "suggest that abused mothers may have as many as three opportunities to be identified at well-baby care visits in the first 3.5 months of their new infants' lives," Krugman and Thompson add.

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