[Birth mortality and pregnancy terminations: how can collected Diagnosis Related Group System data be used?]

In France since 1995, information on diagnoses and care are routinely collected for each patient hospitalised in a public or private hospital, using the Diagnosis Related Group system. Information on birth events constitutes a good example of possible use of this information for other aims than economic activity evaluation. In this paper, in order to highlight possible epidemiological use, some recommendations are proposed for collecting data on stillbirths and pregnancy terminations. The lack of usual knowledge on these two adverse events is the reason for this choice. While the improvements in prenatal diagnosis lead to an increase in pregnancy terminations, a minimum common core of collected data should allow routine epidemiological monitoring of these adverse perinatal events.