Objective: The objective of this study was to develop a scoring system for identifying women with near-miss maternal morbidity, and differentiating these women from those with severe but not life-threatening conditions.
Study design and setting: The study was conducted at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago (UIMC), which is a tertiary care hospital with approximately 2,220 births per year. UIMC is in a major urban area serving a predominantly African-American and Latina population. This article focuses on five clinical factors: organ failure (>/=1 system), extended intubation (>12 hr), ICU admission, surgical intervention, and transfusion (>3 units), grouped into several scoring system alternatives. The total score on each scoring system was calculated as the weighted sum of the clinical factors present for each woman.
Results: The five-factor scoring system had the highest specificity (93.9%), but the four-factor scoring system, which eliminated organ system failure for simplification of data collection, still had a specificity of 78.1%.
Conclusion: Near-miss morbidities identified using the scoring systems presented can be incorporated into clinical case review and epidemiologic studies to enhance the monitoring of obstetric care and to improve estimates of the incidence of life-threatening complications in pregnancy.