The number of women who died during or shortly after pregnancy has risen dramatically, reaching a 20-year high, raising concerns among experts.
In the year Between 2020 and 2022, the maternal mortality rate reached 13.41 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies. MBRRACE-UK Maternal mortality investigation in the UK. From 2017 to 2019, it was 8.79.
It was the highest death rate since 2003-05, when maternal mortality was 13.95 deaths per 100,000.
Excluding maternal deaths due to the coronavirus, the maternal mortality rate between 2020 and 2022 (11.54 deaths per 100,000 people) is higher than the rate between 2017 and 2019.
Professor Marian Knight, Director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit and MBRRACE-UK Maternity Reporting Director, said the figures were worrying. The last 20 years.”
A spokesperson for NHS England said: “While the NHS has made significant improvements to maternity services over the past decade, we know that more is needed to improve the experience of women and their families across the country.
A separate study found that women with depression during pregnancy or in the first year after the birth of a child In particular, they are more than twice as likely to die by suicide.
Perinatal depression is one of the most common pregnancy complications, affecting up to 20% of women around the time of delivery. Despite its enormous prevalence worldwide, the relationship between perinatal stress and mortality has not been seriously investigated until now.
The association could not be explained by shared familial factors and was independent of pre-existing psychiatric disorders, the study found. The researchers said affected women, their families and health professionals should be aware of these serious health risks.
The researchers wrote in the BMJ: “Women with clinically proven postpartum depression are at increased risk of death independent of psychiatric history and family factors.” “The association is stronger for unnatural deaths, especially suicides and in the first year of diagnosis.”
An international team of researchers set out to find out whether women with postpartum depression have an increased risk of death compared to unaffected women and siblings.
In the year Using data from the Swedish National Registry between 2001 and 2018, they identified 86,551 women with first-time postpartum depression and 865,510 unaffected women matched for age and year of delivery.
To control for shared family factors, they compared data from 24,473 women who had at least one child during the study period with 246,113 unaffected full sisters.
Several well-known risk factors for both depression and premature death have been considered, including socioeconomic status, preexisting mental illness, adverse birth outcomes, and death of a child in the first year after birth.
The results showed that women with postpartum depression were more than twice as likely to die as women without postpartum depression, the BMJ said. The results were similar when comparing mortality among sisters and between women with and without a pre-existing psychiatric disorder.
The increased risk associated with postpartum depression is most pronounced in the first year after diagnosis. Although it declined over time, it remained high throughout the 18 years of study follow-up.
Although suicide is rare, women with perinatal depression are six times more likely to die by suicide, and three times more likely to die in an accident, compared to women without perinatal depression.
These were observational findings and the researchers highlighted several limitations, such as the inclusion of only women who needed special care for depression and the categorization of some suicidal events as risk factors.
And when they controlled for a variety of factors, including family sharing, they couldn’t rule out the possibility that some other unmeasured factor might have influenced their results.
However, they concluded: “Women affected by postpartum depression, their families and health professionals, especially those involved in primary, maternal and psychiatric care, should be aware of the serious health risks regardless of psychiatric history.”
Early detection and treatment of high-risk groups of perinatal depression is needed to prevent fatal outcomes.