Incidence and causes of maternal near-miss in selected hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Because maternal mortality is a rare event, it is important to study maternal near-miss as a complement to evaluate and improve the quality of obstetric care. Thus, the study was conducted with the aim of assessing the incidence and causes of maternal near-miss. METHODS: A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted in five selected public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from May 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016. All maternal near-miss cases admitted to the selected hospitals during the study period were prospectively recruited. World Health Organization criteria were used to identify maternal near-miss cases. The number of maternal near-miss cases over one year per 1000 live births occurring during the same year was calculated to determine the incidence of maternal near-miss. Underlying and contributing causes of maternal near-miss were documented from each participant’s record. RESULTS: During the one-year period, there were a total of 238 maternal near-miss cases and 29,697 live births in all participating hospitals, which provides a maternal near-miss incidence ratio of 8.01 per 1000 live births. The underlying causes of the majority of maternal near-miss cases were hypertensive disorders and obstetric hemorrhage. Anemia was the major contributing cause reported for maternal near-miss. Most of the maternal near-miss cases occurred before the women’s arrival at the participating hospitals. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrated a lower maternal near-miss incidence ratio compared to previous country-level studies. The majority of the near-miss cases occurred before the women’s arrival at the participating hospitals, which underscores the importance of improving pre-hospital barriers. Efforts made toward improvement in the management of life-threatening obstetric complications could reduce the occurrence of maternal near-miss problems that occur during hospitalization.