Global risk of death due to delays in the care of pregnant women with obstetric complication in Yucatan, Mexico

Abstract

Delays in care of obstetric emergency exist. Studies involving specialists in charge of treating obstetric emergencies to get to know their perceptions on the care of maternal complications are scarce. There is evidence on the importance of taking into account the opinion of specialists in the face of complex problems, where the necessary information is difficult to come by with classical statistical methods.

Objective: To estimate the global risk of maternal death due to delays.

Methods: Elicitation technique with a panel of experts was used to elicit probabilities of delays regarding the care of the pregnant women with obstetric complications by means of Bayesian statistics. Four gyneco-obstetricians conformed the sample.

Results: The global risk of maternal death due to delays was 54%. The final count of the global impact of mortality with the three-delay model in a real-life scenario was that 12.7% of the women with obstetric complication would die due to the presence of the three delays.

Conclusion: The global risk of death for delays in obstetric emergency care, obtained from the GOs’, should be taken into account for decision-makers, in order to promote strategies to prevent delays and thus contribute to the reduction of maternal mortality.