Midwives Victoria: Homebirth Statistics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 4:04 pm and is filed under AMA, Australian College of Midwives, Blog Articles, SA study, Studies and Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “Midwives Victoria: Homebirth Statistics”

Joy Johnston Says: January 19th, 2010 at 6:56 pm

The conclusion in the Kennare etal MJA paper that “Perinatal safety of home births may be improved substantially by better adherence to risk assessment, timely transfer to hospital when needed, and closer fetal surveillance” is a statment that has no bearing on the data that was reviewed by the study. When there is no investigation of risk assessment, time of transfer, and status of fetal surveillance, the ‘researchers’ cannot conclude that outcomes may be “substantially improved” if it was done better. The authors may hold this opinion, but it’s a stretch to claim that it is a conclusion drawn from reviewing the data.

In my opinion this paper may well discredit the authors and the organisation that published it.