[Maternal mortality in France, 2007-2009]

To monitor the maternal mortality which is an indicator of the quality of obstetric and intensive care, France has a specific approach since 1996. Recently linkages have been introduced to improve the inclusion of cases. Here are the results for the 2007 to 2009 period. The identification of the pregnancy associated deaths is lying on different data bases that are medical causes of death, birth register and hospital discharges. To document the cases, confidential enquiries are conducted by two assessors on the field; a committee of medical experts analyses the documents, select the underlying cause and assess the quality of health care. Two hundred and fifty-four obstetric deaths were identified from 2007 to 2009 giving the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 10.3 per 100,000 births. The maternal age and nationality, the region of deaths are associated to the MMR. The haemorrhages are the leading cause but their ratio is 1.9 versus 2.5 previously; this decrease results from the postpartum haemorrhage by uterine atony going down. The suboptimal care are still frequent (60%) but slightly less than before. The linkage method should be pursued. Maternal mortality is rather stable in France. We may reach more reduction as deaths due to atony decreased as suboptimal care did.