Perinatal Mortality: Does Antenatal Care Matters? A Retrospective Analysis

Introduction: Perinatal mortality rate (PMR) is the most sensitive index of the health status of women and quality of maternal and child health services. Over 130 million babies are born every year, large numbers of children die soon after birth, many of them in the first 4 weeks of life (neonatal deaths) and most of them in the first week (early neonatal deaths). Objective: The objective of this study was to find out the prevalence of perinatal mortality and the factors associated with perinatal death. Methods: A retrospective analysis was done in a tertiary care center. All perinatal deaths during the period between January and December 2015 were included in the study. Results: There were 6722 deliveries and 256 perinatal deaths during the study period. PMR was 37.2/1000 births. The stillbirth rate was 26.2/1000 births, and early neonatal death rate was 11.06/1000 births. Severe pre-eclampsia/eclampsia and antepartum hemorrhage (APH) were the common causes of perinatal deaths. Of concern, we found more percent of unbooked cases associated to stillbirth (119 vs. 61) with severe pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, APH, and undetermined causes were main factors related to stillbirth death. Conclusion: Poor antenatal care was found associated with increased PMR. Hypertension and APH are leading causes of perinatal deaths. The majority of these complications occur in the later part of pregnancy, increased vigilance during antenatal care at the base level can reduce these deaths.