USA has the highest maternal mortality rate of all industrialized countries

[tynopik]

Eh? Which country are they flat out making up the data for?

try reading my first comment, the appropriate parts are even bolded for you

 

[Pulsar]

stop right there, it wasn't even 'most European countries', it was stuff like Iran

also look at the huge jump in the US stats. There is no reason to think that reflects an actual change in the death rate

in other words it has no credibility

Discredit a poor study - that's fine with me. But let's review where the US stands for a moment. A birth is expensive - and now with the shenanigans going on with insurance, a quick stay (4 days) due to complications can easily bankrupt most families - 100k+ in bills.

Countries like the UK give 52 weeks leave - mostly paid. US Law gives the woman, and only the woman, 12 weeks of UNPAID.

Most European countries allow for male paternity leave - because the kids have 2 parents hopefully. The US? Nope.

I can keep going. US healthcare - and specifically healthcare surround births, sucks giant donkey balls. I don't need statistics to tell me that we're way way behind. I won't even go into what happens with Postpartum depression when the female partner is left alone so the male can go back to work.

 

[tynopik]

Well it did that. You dont agree with it so show where its wrong then.

where did it show that the stats for the other countries were completely sound and reliable?

 

[IEC]

There are a lot of confounding factors here. I'll list just a handful:

1) Many mothers get only a few prenatal visits or NO prenatal visits due to lack of education, lack of transportation, laziness, etc (it's usually not cost, though this sometimes applies). This of course yields worse outcomes on average for both mother and baby.
2) A lot more obese women and women with diabetes, etc. that are pregnant in the US versus other countries. These will on average have worse outcomes for both mother and baby.
3) Teenage pregnancy rates in the US are higher, and these pregnancies often have a higher rate of complications.
4) Geographic distance. The US is very large, and has many areas with few/no medical facilities. Mortality will be higher in these rural/underserved areas.

 

[tynopik]

Discredit a poor study - that's fine with me

ok, great

But let's review where the US stands for a moment.

no, let's stay on topic of this article

if you want to rant about the US health system, start your own thread instead of hijacking this one

 

[WelshBloke]

try reading my first comment, the appropriate parts are even bolded for you

You're bolded seems to talk about morbidity rather than mortality that the graph referenced. Mortality is fairly easy to measure!

 

[WelshBloke]

where did it show that the stats for the other countries were completely sound and reliable?

Have you looked into how records of mortality are kept in say the UK?

 

[tynopik]

Have you looked into how records of mortality are kept in say the UK?

have you looked into how records of mortality are kept in say Iran?

 

[WelshBloke]

have you looked into how records of mortality are kept in say Iran?

Well I was looking at the difference in rates between the US and the UK so that seemed a bit irrelevant.

 

[tynopik]

You're bolded seems to talk about morbidity rather than mortality that the graph referenced. Mortality is fairly easy to measure!

no, the bolded talked about how the couldn't figure out how many deaths were related to pregnancy, so they made some numbers up

 

[tynopik]

Well I was looking at the difference in rates between the US and the UK so that seemed a bit irrelevant.

i was looking at the credibility of the study as whole, so it's very relevant

if the study isn't credible, then it isn't credible and there's no point in discussing numbers from the study

 

[WelshBloke]

no, the bolded talked about how the couldn't figure out how many deaths were related to pregnancy, so they made some numbers up

No it wasnt. It was near death and illness. Unless the bolded bits arent showing up properly on my phone.

 

[WelshBloke]

i was looking at the credibility of the study as whole, so it's very relevant

if the study isn't credible, then it isn't credible and there's no point in discussing numbers from the study

I was just looking at the figures. Why would the US or UK figures be affected by the accuracy of the Iranian ones?

 

[tynopik]

No it wasnt. It was near death and illness. Unless the bolded bits arent showing up properly on my phone.

data collection about maternal health and mortality is a complete mess

there's another bold for you

 

[tynopik]

I was just looking at the figures. Why would the US or UK figures be affected by the accuracy of the Iranian ones?

if someone lies to you about where they've been today, what does that have to do with where they say they'll be tomorrow?

 

[WelshBloke]

there's another bold for you

Thats a fairly airy quote. It also doesn't shine a great light on the US health service if it can't track maternal deaths!

 

[WelshBloke]

if someone lies to you about where they've been today, what does that have to do with where they say they'll be tomorrow?

You realise that the US, UK and Iranian figures are not collected by the same person?

 

[tynopik]

You realise that the US, UK and Iranian figures are not collected by the same person?

you mean that numbers from different countries might be collected differently and might mean different things?

the burden is on qz to show that the numbers are indeed comparable

no i didn't look at how the UK collects their data, not my job, it's qz's job to do that and show that it's reasonable to compare to whatever numbers they decide to use for the US

 

[WelshBloke]

you mean that numbers from different countries might be collected differently and might mean different things?

Well dead and pregnant are fairly well defined terms tbh.

I'm not saying that these figures are definitely correct, just that you're not doing a particularly great job of convincing me they arent.

 

[tynopik]

Well dead and pregnant are fairly well defined terms

was the death related to pregnancy and how do you decide that?

for example, the US figures include all deaths from pregnancy through 1 year after birth. That's a 21 month range.

Is the UK reporting standard the same? I don't know, but they didn't say anything to convince me it was

 

[MomentsofSanity]

If that death was considered the result of her pregnancy then I would argue that their stats are pure crap.

-KeithP

My niece last December ended up with a clot on her brain and temporary paralysis and it was absolutely a result of her pregnancy. They are a direct result of the body recovering after pregnancy.

The example you quoted would have been a result of negligent care and the increased risk of clotting directly attributed to pregnancy combined.

 

[WelshBloke]

was the death related to pregnancy and how do you decide that?

for example, the US figures include all deaths from pregnancy through 1 year after birth. That's a 21 month range.

Is the UK reporting standard the same? I don't know, but they didn't say anything to convince me it was

The study seems fairly robust tbh.

http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(16)31470-2.pdf

 

[darkswordsman17]

...

Editing as its just a response to your posts in this thread in general.

So in other words you don't have any actual proof that the study is poor, you just believe it is, and its on the study to go out of its way to prove to you (openly saying you're not even checking its data, you're just questioning it without any actual regard to finding out if your questions are valid or not) that is isn't, despite you not even looking at the study actually?

Can you provide something substantial? Or are you just going to keep going "nuh-uh, you have to prove the study isn't flawed, I'm not even going to bother myself"? That's all you're actually doing.

Its weird that you argue using an article that actually says things are probably even worse than that as proof that, well its just the bad reporting of data that had the numbers so low. The reality is that it probably didn't spike, it was just underreported, meaning it probably was always much higher and the numbers were lower than they should have been.

As for why the US is faring so much worse, gee, its not like the US has been having a major issue dealing with health care problems or anything.

One last tip. Read the actual study and not articles about it. A link to the study was provided in the OP.

There is no perfect scientific study, and we always need to try to advance our understanding of an issue by testing it more and gathering more data, and improving our analysis of it. Our findings are basically always in flux and that is especially true over time, which is largely the intent of science. And especially on topics where that is the intent of the study (looking at how the results over time). You seem to act like finding flaws in the reporting nullifies the findings of a study completely, ignoring that its actually been quite effective at furthering things (as weird findings often leads to working to figure out what caused it, and if its a data/data collection issue working to improve that, gathering new data that is more rigorously collected to see how it compares so you can determine if there is consistency to the overall data). Back on point though, this study is actually an attempt at doing that, basically looking at various data reported, and it seems to indicate that there very likely was an issue with data reporting, thus that article pointing out how the US system was flawed in just providing the information. Could other countries have similar problems? Yes, but that doesn't change that US maternal mortality rate seems to be quite high, and is much higher than you'd expect, and seems like it was probably much higher than it was reported as being. It really doesn't even matter in comparison, you already have real issues that need to be addressed just from looking at the US figures and them looking into why there seemed to be a high increase. Which you might notice is the entire point of doing studies like these, to look into and then hopefully work to address problems that are revealed.

 

[tynopik]

So in other words you don't have any actual proof that the study is poor

they themselves go on about how the data is garbage, how a small number of cases could dramatically change the results, about why it's hugely inconsistent, how the cases have to manually reviewed, etc

then they expect to make cogent points about said garbage

sorry, garbage in, garbage out.

you just believe it is, and its on the study to go out of its way to prove to you

yes exactly. they're the ones making the claims, they're the ones that should be providing the proof

Can you provide something substantial?

i could ask the same of the study. They spend so much time talking about the flaws in the US data, are we supposed to assume that other countries don't have flawed data too? If you're going to try compare seriously flawed data to other seriously flawed data, you're damn right that you better make a convincing case that there's actually something there instead of just looking at noise.

Its weird that you argue using an article that actually says things are probably even worse than that as proof that, well its just the bad reporting of data that had the numbers so low.

because those same reasons and other reasons could impact other countries. The whole point of the article is to compare countries, and if the data isn't comparable, then what's the point?

The reality is that it probably didn't spike, it was just underreported

are other countries underreporting too? enquiring minds want to know

As for why the US is faring so much worse, gee, its not like the US has been having a major issue dealing with health care problems or anything.

even within the US data, the numbers are dramatically skewed by the african american population. It's less a problem with health care as a whole than with how health care interacts with the african american community. This is obviously a serious problem, but it helps to identify where the problem lies

There is no perfect scientific study

we aren't talking about perfect, we're talking about errors so large they could make difference (and hence the point of the article) mostly disappear

Could other countries have similar problems? Yes, but that doesn't change that US maternal mortality rate seems to be quite high

how do you know? without reliable, consistent data we simply can't make a valid comparison

 

[Paratus]

The data from Texas from 2006 onward is pretty good and we are the worst state in the nation for maternal mortality. Worse than Mexico and Turkey even.

http://www.governing.com/topics/hea...al-infant-mortality-pregnant-women-texas.html

However, from 2011 to 2014 the number doubled. During those more recent years, more than 600 Texas women died from complications around childbirth. Those figures, the study concluded, didn’t make sense “in the absence of war, natural disaster or severe economic upheaval.”

There’s no study providing a complete answer but data found correlations for

• Chronic diseases - hypertension, diabetes, etc
• Opioid addiction
• Lack of healthcare access - Tx state government forced most planned parenthood’s to close, couples with rural hospitals closing remaining hospitals are very stressed. Medicaid expansion was rejected.
• Increases in mortality among all mothers but most increases in poor minorities
• Excessive use of C-sections for even first time low risk mothers