Study suggests hospital-based maternal deaths are occurring earlier in pregnancy or postpartum – while maternal deaths occurring at the time of delivery are declining in the U.S.

Hospitalizations that occur in the antenatal period – or during pregnancy, but before giving birth— and those that occur in the postpartum period, made up over half of in-hospital maternal deaths between 2017-2019, a new study reveals.

The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, estimated rates of in-hospital maternal deaths from the National Inpatient Sample from the years 1994 to 2015 and from 2017 to 2019 among antenatal, childbirth, and postpartum hospitalizations in the United States.

“Maternal mortality rates are high in the United States, higher than as seen in all other industrialized countries,” said lead author Lindsay Admon, M.D., MSc, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School and obstetrician-gynecologist at University of Michigan Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital.

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