Even during the first trimester, nearly one percent of pregnant women experience a stillbirth, reports an article published online in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) on June 19, 2018.
This means that every six minutes, a pregnant woman who is or could be in labor dies from a stillbirth.
“The statistics on stillbirth are astounding,” writes Reshma Jagsi, MD, MPH, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and epidemiology and population health, and at the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. For example, 60,000 babies (one in 44, or about one in 15, are stillborn in the United States every year — or two a day) from the first trimester are lost, Jagsi writes.
But stillbirths are not uncommon: “In the United States, there are roughly 275,000 stillbirths each year,” Jagsi writes. And many of these deaths, she adds, could be prevented by educating women — and couples — about the best things for couples and their babies to do while pregnant.
After studying stillbirth rates among more than 52,000 women who delivered at 41 hospitals in Wisconsin and Texas between 2008 and 2012, the study’s authors found that there was an association between higher proportions of couples using cesarean section or use of medications like Sersal and birth control pills and stillbirths. But there was no such relationship with blood pressure medication, sulfate of potatum or acetic acid; no correlation was found between fertility medications and stillbirths.
Blood pressure medication: Women using a blood pressure medicine were 3.9 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Couples who had a cesarean section — which isn’t recommended for pregnant women with slightly high blood pressure — were 2.3 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Women taking Sersal and birth control pills were 2.4 times more likely to have a stillbirth.
But there was no such relationship between blood pressure medication, sulfate of potatum or acetic acid; no correlation was found between fertility medications and stillbirths.
Couples who had a cesarean section — which isn’t recommended for pregnant women with slightly high blood pressure — were 2.3 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Women taking Sersal and birth control pills were 2.4 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Blood pressure medication: Women using a blood pressure medicine were 3.9 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Couples who had a cesarean section — which isn’t recommended for pregnant women with slightly high blood pressure — were 2.3 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Women taking Sersal and birth control pills were 2.4 times more likely to have a stillbirth.
In 2014, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists was reformulating its guidelines regarding the risks and benefits of cesarean sections. Their updated recommendations now generally say that while cesarean sections are beneficial to the baby, the surgery should only be done in the event of a rare and potentially life-threatening complication or when the woman is not well or when the baby’s life is in danger. Those “known but uncomplicated cases” are pretty rare; it’s estimated that they make up less than 10 percent of all C-sections performed each year in the United States. By contrast, women who had a cesarean section were 3.8 times more likely to have a stillbirth than women who didn’t.
The ACOG said in a statement that it “adopts this guideline with the utmost caution and has revised our guidelines to move toward an ‘every woman, every time’ approach to complications such as high blood pressure and urinary tract infection, as indicated in the guidelines.”
More information on this study can be found on JAMA’s website.
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