Despite the decline in pregnancy-related mortality rates, almost one half of these deaths could potentially be prevented, mainly through improved quality of medical care. In-depth review of pregnancy-related deaths can help determine strategies needed to continue making pregnancy safer.

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The average fetal radiation dose with helical CT is less than that with ventilation-perfusion lung scanning during all trimesters.

Racial and ethnic disparities exist in both perinatal outcomes and health care quality. For example, black women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes and have more than a 2-fold greater risk of severe maternal morbidity than white women. In an effort to achieve health equity in maternal morbidity and mortality, a multidisciplinary workgroup of the National Partnership for Maternal Safety, within the Council on Patient Safety in Women's Health Care, developed a concept article for the bundle on reduction of peripartum disparities. We aimed to provide health care providers and health systems with insight into racial and ethnic disparities in maternal outcomes, the etiologies that are modifiable within a health care system, and resources that can be used to address these etiologies and achieve the desired end of safe and equitable health care for all childbearing women.

No abstract