Pregnancy outcomes at Mizan-Tepi University Teaching Hospital: A Comparison to the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys

BACKGROUND: To compare outcomes at Mizan-Tepi University Teaching Hospital to national and regional data and to plan quality improvement and research studies based on the results. METHODS: This study was a prospective hospital-based cross-sectional analysis of a convenience sample of 1, 000 women who delivered at Mizan-Tepi University Teaching Hospital. RESULTS: Our convenience sample was young (median age 24 years) with a primarily school level or less of education (68.6%). Only about 5% of women had a history of prior cesarean birth, 2.1% reported they were human immunodeficiency virus seropositive, and the median number of prenatal visits was four. Women were commonly admitted in spontaneous labor (84.5%), transferred from another facility (49.2%; 96.8% of which were referred from a health center), and had their fetal heart rate auscultated on admission (94.7%). Only 5.2% of women did not deliver within twenty-four hours and the cesarean birth prevalence was 23.4%. Many women were delivered by midwives (73.2%; all unassisted vaginal births), 89.2% were term deliveries, and 92.5% of neonatal birthweights were 2500 grams or heavier. Less than five percent of women delivered stillbirths (4.3%) and 5.7% of livebirths experienced neonatal death by the day of discharge. There were no maternal deaths in the cohort. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of stillbirth and neonatal death were the most notable findings, while there was no maternal death in the cohort.