[citation needed] In human medicine, "gravidity" refers to the number of times a female has been pregnant,[1] regardless of whether the pregnancies were interrupted or resulted in a live birth.
“Gravidity” is an important component of a patient’s reproductive history, as it provides insight into the risk factors that the patient has for pregnancy outcomes, such as risk for gestational diabetes, pre-ecclampsia, spontaneous abortion, preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, and more.
If a female carries the fetus to viable age, even if ultimately the fetus is born deceased, this still counts as an instance of parity, as parity is based on the time of gestation prior to a birth, and not the status of the offspring once born.
[8][9] A female who has never carried a pregnancy beyond 20 weeks is nulliparous and is called a nullipara or para 0.
Nulliparity has been implicated in the development of various complications during pregnancy including preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and pre-term labor.
These include: Though similar, GPA should not be confused with the TPAL system, the latter of which may be used to provide information about the number of miscarriages, preterm births, and live births by dropping the "A" from "GPA" and including four separate numbers after the "P", as in G5P3114.
In obstetrics, the term can lead to some ambiguity for events occurring between 20 and 24 weeks,[21] and for multiple pregnancies.