Maternal and neonatal separation and mortality associated with concurrent admissions to intensive care units

Concurrent admission of a mother and her newborn to separate intensive care units (herein referred to as co-ICU admission), possibly in different centres, can magnify family discord and stress. We examined the prevalence and predictors of mother-infant separation and mortality associated with co-ICU admissions.

We completed a population-based study of all 1 023 978 singleton live births in Ontario between Apr. 1, 2002, and Mar. 31, 2010. We included data for maternal-infant pairs that had co-ICU admission (n = 1216), maternal ICU admission only (n = 897), neonatal ICU (NICU) admission only (n = 123 236) or no ICU admission (n = 898 629). The primary outcome measure was mother-infant separation because of interfacility transfer.

The prevalence of co-ICU admissions was 1.2 per 1000 live births and was higher than maternal ICU admissions (0.9 per 1000). Maternal-newborn separation due to interfacility transfer was 30.8 (95% confidence interval [CI] 26.9-35.3) times more common in the co-ICU group than in the no-ICU group and exceeded the prevalence in the maternal ICU group and NICU group. Short-term infant mortality (< 28 days after birth) was higher in the co-ICU group (18.1 per 1000 live births; maternal age-adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 27.8, 95% CI 18.2-42.6) than in the NICU group (7.6 per 1000; age-adjusted HR 11.5, 95% CI 10.4-12.7), relative to 0.7 per 1000 in the no-ICU group. Short-term maternal mortality (< 42 days after delivery) was also higher in the co-ICU group (15.6 per 1000; age-adjusted HR 328.7, 95% CI 191.2-565.2) than in the maternal ICU group (6.7 per 1000; age-adjusted HR 140.0, 95% CI 59.5-329.2) or the NICU group (0.2 per 1000; age-adjusted HR 4.6, 95% CI 2.8-7.4).

Mother-infant pairs in the co-ICU group had the highest prevalence of separation due to interfacility transfer and the highest mortality compared with those in the maternal ICU and NICU groups.