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Papers

Perinatal death associated with planned home birth in Australia: population based study

BMJ 1998; 317 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.317.7155.384 (Published 08 August 1998) Cite this as: BMJ 1998;317:384

Rapid Response:

Re: How does study bias affect these perinatal mortality rates

Sally Tracy seeks to criticise a study which was partly funded by
Homebirth Australia and which sought data from the very practitioners
which she seeks to defend. You can't get much more prospective than that!
The fact that the authors had to get data from newsletters and Governments
is more an indictment of the practitioners than a deficiency in the study.
Furthermore, the decrease in the number of participants in the last two
years of the study suggests, to the cycnical observer, that they may have
pulled out to save further embarassment or worse still, censure.
I am a GP in a four-doctor practice which has conducted some 300
deliveries, over the past 8 years, in co-operation with capable midwives
in a small country hospital . We do not electively manage breech, twins or
pre-term pregnancies - these are transferred to the care of the nearest
obstetrician - and we have a perinatal mortality of zero.
Readers may interpret these figures as they see fit.

Competing interests: No competing interests

04 February 1999
Paul Duff
GP
Bright, Victoria, Australia