Choosing between home and hospital delivery

doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7237.798

BMJ 2000;320:798 ( 18 March )

Letters

Choosing between home and hospital delivery

Home birth in Britain can be safe

There is no evidence that hospital is the safest place to give birth

Risk of home birth in Britain cannot be compared with data from other countries

Author's reply

Home birth in Britain can be safe

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Drife's assertion that hospital birth is three times as safe as planned home birth is misleading.¹ Since the studygroups were dissimilar it is about as helpful as saying that aman and a dog have an average of three legs. He is also wrongto say that "no recent audit of the safety of home delivery inBritain is available." Just such an audit has been running herefor 18 years.² There has been no intrapartum death and onlyone neonatal (0-27 day) death in the past 15 years among the estimated3400 mothers (0.6%) who were booked for home birth when labourstarted. The comparable figure for all such births in this regionfor these years (1984-98), after lethal malformation and babiesweighing less than 2.5 kg are excluded, is 1:921 (587/540 830).That home birth has become statistically "safer" than hospitalbirth is not, of course, unexpected, as high risk mothers . . . [Full text of this article]

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Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America: Kenneth C Johnson and Betty-Anne Daviss
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This article has been cited by other articles:

Johnson, K. C, Daviss, B.-A. (2005). Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America. BMJ 330: 1416- [Abstract] [Full text]