Maternal Deaths Following Severe Maternal Morbidity During Childbirth in Canada

Severe maternal morbidity (SMM) includes potentially life-threatening illnesses during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period. Our objective was to describe SMM case fatality rates in Canada from 2015/16 to 2021/22, including SMM-specific mortality rates and provincial/territorial variations. We studied all hospital deliveries in Canada (excluding Québec) with data obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Among 1 917 857 women with a hospital childbirth, 35 432 experienced SMM (18.5 per 1000 deliveries) and of these, 75 died before hospital discharge (2.12 deaths per 1000 women with SMM). Cardiac conditions, assisted ventilation, and embolism/shock/disseminated intravascular coagulation were associated with the highest case fatality rates. Case fatality rates differed significantly across provinces/territories.