Premium
Safety of birth centre care: perinatal mortality over a 10‐year period
Author(s) -
Gottvall Karin,
Grunewald Charlotta,
Waldenström Ulla
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
bjog: an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.157
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1471-0528
pISSN - 1470-0328
DOI - 10.1046/j.1471-0528.2003.00017.x
Subject(s) - medicine , obstetrics , pregnancy , retrospective cohort study , medical record , odds ratio , multiple birth , pediatrics , gestation , cohort study , population , genetics , environmental health , radiology , pathology , biology
Objective To study perinatal mortality in women booked for birth centre care during pregnancy. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting In‐hospital birth centre and standard maternity care in Stockholm. Population Two thousand and five hundred and thirty‐four women (3256 pregnancies) admitted to an in‐hospital birth centre over 10 years (1989–2000) and 126,818 women (180,380 pregnancies) who gave birth in standard care during the same period and who met the same medical inclusion criteria as in the birth centre. Multiple pregnancies were excluded. Methods Data were collected from the Swedish Medical Birth Register. Information on all cases of perinatal death in the birth centre group was retrieved from the medical records. Main outcome measure Perinatal mortality. Results No statistically significant difference in the overall perinatal mortality rate was observed between the birth centre group and the standard care group (odds ratio [OR] 1.5, 95% CI 0.9–2.4), but infants of primiparas were at greater risk (OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.3–3.9). Infants of multiparas tended to be at lower risk, but this difference was not statistically significant (OR 0.7, 95% CI 0.3–1.9). These figures were adjusted for maternal age and gestation in multiple regression analyses. Conclusion Birth centre care may be less safe for infants of first‐time mothers.