They noted that we must achieve better consensus regarding maternal and fetal risks and
benefits of planned home birth, site selection criteria, and essential qualifications for maternal newborn providers in all settings.
However, the goal of this summit was not to examine, debate, or form a consensus statement regarding the evidence published regarding safety or maternal - newborn
outcomes of planned home birth.
However, they noted a smaller study
of all planned home births attended by midwives in British Columbia, Canada, from 2000 to 2004 that showed no increase in neonatal mortality over planned hospital births attended by midwives or physicians.
The authors» main argument against the proven cost -
effectiveness of planned home birth is that «the lifetime costs of supporting the neurologically disabled children who will result from planned home birth» have not been factored in, nor have the supposedly increased rates of death.
Practice Guidelines for California Licensed Midwives Best Practice Guidelines: Transfer from Planned Home Birth to Hospital Citizens for Midwifery Home Birth Facts Canadian Medical Association Journal: Outcomes
of Planned Home Birth Solace for Mothers: Informed Consent Questions to Consider when Interviewing a Doctor or Midwife
The
rarity of planned home births and particularly perinatal death in any birthing environment makes gathering a sufficient sample for ensuring a dataset large enough to offer the incidences of rare outcomes particularly challenging.
Asked about safety
concerns of her planned home birth, Surette - Nelson explains: «Because this was my second uncomplicated pregnancy, my familiarity with the labouring and birthing process left me with few major concerns about the safety of a home birth.»
These researchers then argued that obstetricians and other concerned physicians should understand, identify, and correct the root causes of the
recrudescence of planned home birth; respond to expressions of interest in planned home birth by women with evidence - based recommendations against it; refuse to participate in planned home birth; but still provide excellent and compassionate emergency obstetric care to women transported from planned home birth.
This is the largest
registry of planned home births in the U.S. and one of only two large datasets where normal physiologic birth can be studied, and we thank all of the contributor midwives who have made this possible.
SMMIS contains over 500,000 observations, so even though fewer than 2 % had a planned home birth, the absolute
number of planned home births was large enough to give reasonable power to statistical tests.
The objective of this review was to assess the
effects of planned home birth compared to hospital birth on the rates of interventions, complications and morbidity as determined in randomized trials.
This does not allow for appropriate comparisons to be made, because we know that not only do unplanned, unattended home births have poorer outcomes than planned, attended home births, we also know that about 10 - 11 %
of planned home births transfer to the hospital.
Ethics dictate that all healthcare providers should respect the autonomy of individuals to make their own informed decisions, and this study provides further information about the risks and benefits
of planned home birth so that families can make those decisions with the information available.
Rates of planned home birth in the US have remained low for several decades, but recently an increasing number of women have been recorded as having planned home births.
And we look forward to more research studies using the MANA Stats Registry — about many
aspects of planned home birth — from outcomes, to cost savings for insurers, to women's own experiences of childbirth.
Ideally — and particularly when offset against virtually 100 % hospital births in the rest of Europe — better evidence is needed before generalisations are made on the
merits of planned home birth.
First, a little background on the study, Outcomes
of planned home birth with registered midwife versus planned hospital birth with midwife or physician.
BACKGROUND: Studies
of planned home births attended by registered midwives have been limited by incomplete data, nonrepresentative sampling, inadequate statistical power and the inability to exclude unplanned home births.
This study enables families, providers and policymakers to have a transparent look at the risks and benefits
of planned home birth as well as the health benefits of normal physiologic birth.
Studies of planned home births attended by registered midwives have been limited by incomplete data, nonrepresentative sampling, inadequate statistical power and the inability to exclude unplanned home births.
Only when these questions are answered will it be possible to make a clear and confident statement about the relative
safety of planned home birth in relation to PPH.
«Kenneth C Johnson and Betty - Anne Daviss's
Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America, BMJ 2005; 330:1416 (18 June), found that the outcomes of planned homebirths for low risk mothers were the same as the outcomes of planned hospital births for low risk mothers, with a significantly lower incident of interventions in the homebirth group.»
The blog post says that one of the articles «describes the outcomes
of planned home births with midwives between 2004 and 2009.»