Confidential enquiry into maternal deaths in The Netherlands 1983–1992

Misclassified Maternal Deaths among East African Immigrants in Sweden

“…A study from the Netherlands confirms that early pregnancy deaths and indirect deaths stand a high risk of being under-reported, as the fact that the deceased had been pregnant, though noted on the death certificate, was commonly overlooked. 10 In our study, the correctly classified Case 8 was related to first trimester abortion.…”

“…Our findings are supported by epidemiological studies in Europe and the USA showing a pattern of poor obstetric outcomes among Somali refugees in the West. 10,[17][18][19] We estimate that our Somali locator initiated more ''snowballs'' than the other locators, and actively performed the snowball sampling for a longer period of time than the others. The over-representation of Somali cases might also have been a result of differences in the Somali network size.…”

“…[7][8][9][10][11] A recent confidential enquiry into maternal deaths in the UK studied deaths among disadvantaged women, including black African women, and found they were more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or the puerperium than their white counterparts. 12 To our knowledge, there is a lack of similar studies of maternal mortality and ethnicity in Sweden.…”

Care of the migrant obstetric population

“…3). 25,26 In a national cohort study conducted by the United Kingdom Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS), the relative risk of severe maternal morbidity was significantly greater for nonwhite women even when adjusted for age and socioeconomic status (Fig. 4).…”

A serious complication in the puerperium: peripartum cardiomyopathy

“…Two women died in the puerperium and one woman died 80 days postpartum. 12 Between 1993 to 2002 three women died following peripartum cardiomyopathy. 13 The prognosis depends on the normalisation of left ventricular size and function within six months after delivery.…”