Nurture :: understanding the causes of perinatal and maternal deaths

Understanding the causes of perinatal and maternal deaths

While pregnancy and childbirth have become much safer in recent decades, there are still a number of perinatal and maternal deaths in New Zealand each year. Perinatal deaths are defined as deaths occurring from 20 weeks gestation (or a birthweight of >400g if gestation is unknown) up to 28 days after birth. Maternal deaths are directly related to pregnancy and childbirth.

Cindy Farquhar and Lesley McCowan are building a database of perinatal and maternal deaths in New Zealand, with the aim of understanding the causes of death and reducing preventable deaths in the future.

The database will be the first comprehensive national collection of information and will contain: mother’s obstetric history, history of infertility, fertility treatments, family violence, physical characteristics, place of birth, maternity caregivers, antenatal procedures, smoking and substance use, medical/surgical history. The information collected will be confidential, and specific participants can not be identified.

The database has been commissioned by the Ministry of Health, but can be accessed by researchers in the future. Researchers at The University of Auckland plan to use the database to identify trends that may be contributing to perinatal or maternal death, with the aim of preventing this tragic occurrence in the future.

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pregnancy complications current projects

preventing late pregnancy complications suppressing prelabour contractions understanding the causes of stillbirth investigating the causes of preeclampsia improving antenatal genetic diagnosis pre-term birth and risk of later diabetes analysis of amniotic fluid to predict preterm labour cervical characteristics may predict preterm labour understanding the causes of perinatal and maternal deaths preventing respiratory distress syndrome in preterm babies