General Obstetrics and Gynecology: ObstetricsHigher rate of stillbirth at the extremes of reproductive age: A large nationwide sample of deliveries in the United States
Section snippets
Methods
Data for this study were obtained from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for the years 1995 through 2002. The Nationwide Inpatient Sample is maintained as part of the Healthcare Utilization Project of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research. It represents an approximate 20% stratified sample of all patients who are admitted at non-federal hospitals each year. Five hospital characteristics, geographic region, ownership, location (urban or rural), teaching status, and bed size are used for
Results
We identified 5,874,203 patients who were hospitalized for a delivery with a known outcome; 74.6% of the women were 20 to 34 years old; 12.1% of the women were ≤19 years old; 11.1% of the women were 35 to 39 years old, and 2.2% of the women were ≥40 years old. Table I shows the rates of various potential risk factors for stillbirth and patient demographic information, according to maternal age group at the time of delivery. The rate of multiple gestation rose with advancing age, reaching a high
Comment
We report the effect of maternal age on the incidence of stillbirth for 5,874,203 deliveries, which represents a sample of approximately 20% of all deliveries in the United States for the years 1995 to 2002. We found that the extremes of maternal reproductive age predicted a higher risk of stillbirth and that this effect persisted even after adjustment for several maternal, placental, and fetal risk factors. Further, we showed that the stillbirth rate was relatively stable during the study
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