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Place of delivery: a review
Author(s) -
Campbell Rona,
Macfarlane Alison
Publication year - 1986
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 - 10.1111/j.1471-0528.1986.tb08051.x
Subject(s) - medicine , intervention (counseling) , incidence (geometry) , pediatrics , nursing , optics , physics
Summary. Policies about place of delivery have tended to be formulated without either looking at existing evidence or doing new research into the relative safety for women and babies of delivery in different settings. This article reviews published research on the subject, and finds that many of the data required have not been collected. Furthermore, many analyses fail to take account of selection biases or differences in the birth weight distribution and the incidence of congenital malformations among babies born in different settings. Nevertheless, some tentative conclusions can be drawn. The available evidence does not support claims that, for the baby, the iatrogenic risks of obstetric intervention outweigh the possible benefits. At the same time, there is no evidence to support the claim that the shift to hospital delivery is responsible for the decline in perinatal mortality in England and Wales nor the claim that the safest policy is for all women to be delivered in hospital.