Maternal Near Miss in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Near miss maternal morbidity indicators compliment the mortality indicators in ascertaining the maternal health as well as the health care delivery status. This study was conducted with the aim to find out the maternal near miss indicators of our centre and to determine the causes and nature of the maternal near miss and deaths. All cases who met the WHO organ system dysfunction criteria based on clinical, laboratoryor management based criteria for maternal near miss were included in the study. This was a prospective observational study conducted for 24 months from September 2013 to August 2015. There were 7.7 maternal near misses per 1000 live births. The maternal mortality ratio was 76.7 per 1000 live births. Maternal near miss mortality ratio was 10 and mortality index was 9.1%. Hypertensive disorders (45%) and severe haemorrhages (30%) were the major contributors to maternal near miss. As for maternal deaths, 2 out of 4 occurred due to direct cause like hypertensive disorder and haemorrhage and the remaining 2 due to indirect causes.