Abstract :
Background: Stillbirth rates are unacceptably high in developing countries. India accounts for the highest stillbirth rate in the world. Occurrence of stillbirths poses difficult situation and remains big challenge to health care system. Present study was conducted to understand the incidence, maternal & foetal characteristics and etiological factors for stillbirth.
Material and Methods: The present retrospective record based study conducted at a tertiary care hospital of a Government Medical College, Maharashtra, India. The study includes stillbirths during the period of April 2014-March16. Variables like age, gravida, parity, etiology, birth weight etc. recorded from the indoor papers of stillbirths. All data entered, cleaned and analyzed using Microsoft Excel.
Results: During the study period there were 19085 deliveries out of 978 were still births. The incidence of still births was 51 per thousand births. Maternal characteristics shows 442(45.9%) from the age group of 21-25 yrs, pre term(66.1%), prime gravid 51.39%, while macerated 634(64.8%), &65.5% low birth weight babies observed. Pregnancy induced hypertension [259(26.48%)], Prematurity [184(18.81%)], Medical disorder including Severe anemia [135(13.8%)] & IUGR [89(9.1%)] were most common etiology found among stillbirth.
Conclusion: Progress in reducing Still birth remains at slow rate. Adequate antenatal care including nutrition, identification of risk pregnancies, timely referral of high risk cases will help to reduce the still birth rate. High quality intrapartum care at tertiary care centre located at rural area will certainly reduce the substantive number of still births.
Keyword :
Epidemiology, Etiology, Hospital, Incidence, Stillbirths