High and Rising U.S. Maternal Mortality Rates Due to Bad Data, Study Shows | Top Vip News

A new study has found that high and rising maternal mortality rates in the United States are due to flawed data.

The maternal mortality crisis in the US has shown high rates of maternal death compared to other countries, but the study, published on wednesday in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, found that data may have been misclassified for two decades.

The number of women dying after giving birth has been concerning and has raised questions about care in the U.S. While previous estimates show the maternal mortality rate has more than doubled in the past two decades, the study found that it has remained stable.

In 2003, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) recommended that “pregnancy” be added to a checklist on a person’s death certificate as a way to track maternal deaths.

While there was a rapid increase in maternal mortality rates after the checklist was updated, this resulted in “some egregious errors,” including hundreds of people over 70 being listed as pregnant at the time of his death or shortly before his death. Deaths from other causes would be considered maternal mortality if the pregnant box was checked.

NCHS later clarified that only women ages 15 to 44 should be in the category, in hopes of minimizing errors in the future. Women over 44 years of age could be counted if there was a specific cause of death related to pregnancy. Otherwise, the agency counted women of childbearing age the same as before.

The researchers found that despite the changes, reports still show higher maternal mortality rates or an increase in misclassified maternal deaths.

When death certificates list pregnancy among the multiple causes of death, researchers found that maternal mortality rates decline and stabilize over time.

The study noted that “large racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality persist.” The researchers found that maternal mortality rates were disproportionately higher among black women, with large disparities evident in causes of death such as ectopic pregnancies, hypertensive disorders, stroke, cardiomyopathies and other cardiovascular diseases.

Using the new tracking method, the researchers found that between 1999 and 2002, maternal mortality rates in the United States were 10.2 per 100,000 live births. From 2018 to 2021, it was 10.4, an increase of 2 percent.