Home superior to hospital birth Source: British Medical Journal 2005; 330: 1416-22
The largest prospective study of planned home births to date evaluates the safety of such births supported by direct entry midwives.
Among low-risk women, home births assisted by certified midwives achieve similar rates of intrapartum and neonatal mortality as hospital births, with lower rates of medical intervention, reveal Canadian researchers.
"Despite a wealth of evidence supporting planned home birth as a safe option for women with low risk pregnancies, the setting remains controversial in most high resource settings," note Kenneth Johnson (Public Health Agency of Canada) and Betty-Anne Daviss (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Ottawa).
To examine its safety further, the team compared perinatal outcomes for all planned home births (n = 5418) supported by the North American Registry of Midwives in 2000, with those previously reported for low-risk hospital births in the USA.
Overall, 12.1 percent of women were transferred to hospital for delivery. The incidence of neonatal mortality among those who remained at home was similar to that documented for low-risk hospital births, with no maternal deaths. Medical intervention, however, was substantially less common among home, versus hospital, births, with epidural, episiotomy, forceps, vacuum extraction, and cesarean section rates of 4.7 percent, 2.1 percent, 1.9 percent, 0.6 percent, and 3.7 percent, respectively.
"Our study of certified professional midwives suggests that they achieve good outcomes among low-risk women without routine use of expensive hospital interventions," conclude Johnson and Daviss.
Posted: 23 June 2005 Leanne Wynne Midwife in charge of "Women's Business" Mildura Aboriginal Health Service Mob 0418 371862 -- This mailing list is sponsored by ACE Graphics. Visit <http://www.acegraphics.com.au> to subscribe or unsubscribe.
