OBJECTIVE We sought to systematically review the medical literature on the maternal and newborn safety of planned home vs planned hospital birth. STUDY DESIGN We included English-language peer-reviewed publications from developed Western nations reporting maternal and newborn outcomes by planned delivery location. Outcomes' summary odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated. ...

BACKGROUND The International Network for Evaluating Outcomes in Neonates (iNeo) is a collaboration of population-based national neonatal networks including Australia and New Zealand, Canada, Israel, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The aim of iNeo is to provide a platform for comparative evaluation of outcomes of very preterm and very low birth weight neonates at the national, sit...

OBJECTIVE To design Canadian guidelines advising obstetric care providers of the maternal, fetal, and neonatal implications of aerobic and strength-conditioning exercises in pregnancy. OUTCOMES Knowledge of the impact of exercise on maternal, fetal, and neonatal morbidity, and of the maternal measures of fitness. EVIDENCE MEDLINE search from 1966 to 2002 for English-language articles relate...

BACKGROUND Neonates born between 24 + 0 and 27 + 6 gestational weeks, widely known as extremely preterm neonates, present a category characterized by increased neonatal mortality and morbidity. Main objective of the present study is to analyze the effect of various epidemiological and pregnancy-related parameters on unfavorable neonatal mortality and morbidity outcomes. METHODS A retrospectiv...

OBJECTIVES Assessing the value of the Combined-Apgar score in predicting neonatal mortality and morbidity compared to the Conventional-Apgar. METHODS This prospective cohort study evaluated 942 neonates (166 very preterm, 233 near term, and 543 term) admitted to a tertiary referral hospital. At 1- and 5-minutes after delivery, the Conventional and Combined Apgar scores were recorded. The neon...

anxiety during pregnancy: a risk factor for neonatal physical outcome? alipour z1, lamyian m*2, hajizadeh e3 received: 25 april, 2010 accepted: 27 july, 2010 abstract background & aims: antenatal maternal anxiety is common during pregnancy and may have side effects on mother and neonate. the aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between maternal anxiety and neonatal outcomes in nul...

Despite improvements in access to birth facilities, neonatal mortality remains a critical health issue in many developing countries and causes are not fully understood. The Global Network Maternal Newborn Health Registry provides a rich source of data of neonatal mortality risk factors and outcomes to identify direct causes and higher-level determinants, however performing causal inference usin...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to make improvements in communication and collaboration between neonatal and obstetric specialties. Five NICUs from the Vermont Oxford Network's Evidence-Based Quality Improvement Collaborative in Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine tested potentially better practices that overlap obstetric and NICU care. METHODS One area of practice improvement was the m...

OBJECTIVE To assess the association between cesarean delivery rates and pregnancy outcomes in African health facilities. METHODS Data were obtained from all births over 2-3 months in 131 facilities. Outcomes included maternal deaths, severe maternal morbidity, fresh stillbirths, and neonatal deaths and morbidity. RESULTS Median cesarean delivery rate was 8.8% among 83439 births. Cesarean de...

We can learn what is achievable with current technologies by comparing our neonatal intensive care unit outcomes with others. Because neonatal intensive care units may vary with respect to their case-mix, risk adjustment is essential to making fair comparisons in any research that does not equalize risks through randomization. Risk adjustment first requires strict definition of each specific ou...