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Preconception care for diabetic mothers can help save $ 5.5 billion and over eight thousand preterm deliveries every year, a new Center for Disease Control (CDC) report claims.

Diabetes in pregnant women can cause preterm births, birth defects and perinatal deaths, which can be avoided with preconception care like controlling glucose levels before pregnancy. Such measures not only help reduce risk of harm to child and mother during pregnancy or delivery, but can also lower expenses on lifelong complications, CDC claims. With 2.2 percent of the births in US involve women with diabetes CDC makes a strong pitch for preconception care.

The study's authors said that preconception care can lower healthcare burden by $ 4.3 billion in diabetic women while a further saving of $ 1.2 billion would accrue if preconception care was given to women with undiagnosed diabetes before pregnancy.

The report also showed that preconception care can avert 1,872 perinatal deaths and 3,725 birth defects besides 8,397 preterm births.

"We estimated thousands of adverse birth outcomes might be prevented each year among U.S. women with PGDM through universal PCC at an estimated lifetime societal cost savings of up to $5.5 billion, including nearly $1 billion in direct medical costs. Our results suggest a substantial health and cost burden associated with PGDM that could be prevented by universal PCC, which might offset the cost of providing such care," said lead investigator Cora Peterson, in a press release.

"The preconception period is critical for preventing adverse birth outcomes in women with PGDM. By some estimates, nearly half of U.S. pregnancies, including pregnancies among women with PGDM, are unplanned. To prevent adverse birth outcomes among women with undiagnosed diabetes, diagnosis in the preconception period is needed; the first step would be screening women of reproductive age to identify those with undiagnosed diabetes," said Peterson.