Researchers conducted a pooled, cross-sectional analysis of data from the National Inpatient Sample gathered from 2012 to 2015. They examined hospital stays of 40,873 women who gave birth and underwent an emergency procedure or received a life-threatening condition diagnosis. They focused on 10 types of maternal morbidity.
The study shows that women in every racial and ethnic minority category faced higher incidence of severe maternal morbidity when delivering a baby as compared to non-Hispanic white women.
Severe maternal morbidity occurred in 231.1 per 10,000 delivery hospitalizations among non-Hispanic black women and 139.2 per 10,000 delivery hospitalizations among non-Hispanic white women. Thus, non-Hispanic black women had a 70 percent higher rate of severe birth issues as compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts.
“Taken together, our findings shed light on women of color as a high-risk population for each of the problems examined occurring during delivery and immediately afterward,” said lead author Lindsay Admon, MD, an obstetrician/gynecologist and assistant professor at Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan’s medical school. “Women of color who have multiple health conditions before they have their baby appear to experience a ‘double whammy’ effect, which should force us to think about how to structure care to best serve these vulnerable women, not only during pregnancy but before and after giving birth too.”
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