Severe Obstetric Morbidity: Learning from the “Near Misses”

Although maternal death is a rare obstetric event in the U.S., our inability to standardize the definitions of severe maternal morbidities has hampered the effort to lower their incidence. CDC investigators used data from nationally representative hospital discharges to refine the criteria for identifying severe maternal morbidity. They expanded the diagnostic codes specific to obstetric complications; for example, they added codes for several types of injuries, cardiac monitoring, and cardiac surgery. They then determined morbidity trends from 1998 through 2009.

During 2008 and 2009, 1.3% of delivery hospitalizations involved at least one severe obstetric complication, a 75% increase compared with the period from 1998 through 1999. Rates of…