Table 3.

Risk of postnatal admission for special care among babies delivered to “low risk” women, according to present study and other studies

Study	Type of study	No of babies needing special care/study population	Risk of special care per 1000 live births (95% confidence interval)
NHS surveillance and postal survey England and Wales, 1994-6 (present study)	All babies delivered in water; admission for special care within 48 hours	34/4 030	8.4 (5.8 to 11.8)
Scotland, 199018	Normal primiparous women undergoing non-instrumental deliveries (any admission to special care)*	482/7 524	64 (58 to 70)
North West Thames, 1992-3 (unpublished data)	Standard primiparous women with a spontaneous, normal vaginal delivery (any admission to special care baby unit)**	380/10 307	37 (33 to 41)
North Staffordshire Maternity Hospital17	Extremely low risk (4% of 32 424 deliveries); any admission to neonatal unit	14/1 312	11 (5.8 to 18)
GP managed home births23	Babies requiring specialist care	2/217	9.2 (1.1 to 33)

^*Based on a subsample (16.1% of all maternities) of normal primiparous women (defined as women with no previous registrable pregnancy, a singleton birth, labour not induced, aged 16-35, delivery after 36 completed weeks, no antenatal admission or admitted for 24 hours or less, and no breech presentation). 

^**Unpublished data for 15 maternity units in North West Thames in 1992 and 1993 (94 353 births) based on a subsample of standard primiparous women (defined as white women with no previous registrable pregnancy, aged 20-34 years, height over 1.55 m, singleton delivery, cephalic presentation, >37 weeks’ gestation, delivered in the same unit as booked, no medical complications of pregnancy).²⁴ Any standard primiparous women (14 546) who did not have a spontaneous, normal vaginal delivery or had missing data about perinatal death or admission to special care were excluded, leaving a total of 10 307 births (11% of the total) for analyses.