Incidence
The incidence of puerperal sepsis shows wide variations among published literature — this may be related to different definition, recording etc.
Today in the United States, puerperal infection is believed to occur in between one and 8 percent of all deliveries. About three die from puerperal sepsis for every 100,000 deliveries. The single most important risk factor is Caesarean section.
In the United Kingdom 1985-2005, the number of direct deaths associated with genital tract sepsis per 100,000 maternities was 0.40–0.85.
The incidence of maternal deaths in the United States is 13 in 100,000.
Puerperal fever or childbed fever in the 18th and 19th centuries affected, on average, six to 9 women in every 1,000 deliveries, killing two to three of them with peritonitis or septicemia. It was the single most common cause of maternal mortality, accounting for about half of all deaths related to childbirth, and was second only to tuberculosis in killing women of childbearing age. A rough estimate is that about 250,000–500,000 died from puerperal fever in the 18th and 19th centuries in England and Wales alone.
The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (UK) reported, in 2003–2005, genital tract sepsis accounted for 14% of direct causes of maternal death still making puerperal fever a significant factor in maternal death.
Read more about this topic: Puerperal Fever
Famous quotes containing the word incidence:
“Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspection and interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)