BACKGROUND The perinatal mortality review meeting that takes place within the hospital following a stillbirth or neonatal death enables clinicians to learn vital lessons to improve care for women and their families for the future. Recent evidence suggests that parents are unaware that a formal review following the death of their baby takes place. Many would welcome the opportunity to feedback i...

Cross-sectional surveys of perinatal mortality show a U-shaped curve when plotted against parity, implying that fourth and subsequent babies are at increased risk. Our study of a large, population-based longitudinal data set shows that this result is an artefact and that perinatal mortality falls with increasing parity. Within cohorts of mothers based on attained sibship size the perinatal mort...

Bloodstream infection is demonstrable at necropsy in 21-1 % of perinatal deaths but is almost invariably a secondary event, often terminal, contributing to death as a secondary cause. In only 3-8% is infection recorded as the primary cause of death. Escherichia coli predominates, and postmortem and antemortem studies alike confirm the tendency of this and other microbes to involve the meninges ...

Recent studies show that the infants of women with pregestational diabetes have a 4to 6-fold increased risk of PNM reaching 28 to 48 per 10003-14. However, the true PNM rate in this population is difficult to asses because it includes women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes and excludes some women with previously undiagnosed type 2 diabetes misdiagnosed as having GDM. There are only a few publish...

BACKGROUND Marondera District recorded perinatal mortality ratios of 58.6/1000 and 64.6/1000 live births in 2007 and 2008 respectively. These ratios were above provincial averages of 32/1000 and 36/1000 during the same periods. We determined factors associated with perinatal mortality in Marondera District. METHODS A 1:2 unmatched case control study was carried out from June to August 2009. A...

BACKGROUND Despite twinning being common in Africa, few prospective twin studies have been conducted. We studied twinning rate, perinatal mortality and the clinical characteristics of newborn twins in urban Guinea-Bissau. METHODS The study was conducted at the Bandim Health Project (BHP), a health and demographic surveillance site in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau. The cohort included a...

Recent studies show that the infants of women with pregestational diabetes have a 4to 6-fold increased risk of PNM reaching 28 to 48 per 10003-14. However, the true PNM rate in this population is difficult to asses because it includes women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes and excludes some women with previously undiagnosed type 2 diabetes misdiagnosed as having GDM. There are only a few publish...

STUDY OBJECTIVE This study aimed to analyse the influence of social, economic, and health development on infant and perinatal mortality in Spain between 1975 and 1986, and to identify possible changes in these relationships over time. DESIGN Study of the association between mortality and a range of variables. SETTING 50 Spanish provinces. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Mean infant and peri...

Twins and higher–order multiple pregnancies account for approximately 3% of all gestations in the United States (Ananth et al, 2004) and seem to be stabilized since 2006 after a dramatically increase since the beginning of the 1970s (Vayssière et al, 2011). There are two main causes for the change in the rate of multiple pregnancies: advanced maternal age and use of assisted reproductive techni...

Perinatal mortality refers to the death of a fetus or neonate and is the basis to calculate the perinatal mortality rate. The perinatal period is the most vulnerable period in the life of an individual and the rate of death during this period is higher than at any other period of life. Deaths during this short period equal the rate of death over the next forty year period. Social, cultural, env...