This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on ISI (7)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Pregnancy and Breast Feeding  • Alert me on articles by topic

Victoria Frye, MPH

JAMA. 2001;285:1510-1511.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Maternal mortality has been defined traditionally as deaths "related to or aggravated by" pregnancy complications, excluding "accidental or incidental causes," occurring during pregnancy or within 42 days of termination.¹ In other words, maternal deaths are those that would not have occurred if not for the pregnancy. This definition restricts the potential causal contribution of pregnancy to women's deaths, because only causes of death that are biologically related to the pregnancy are counted. However, some deaths are not biologically, but may be socially, related to the pregnancy and may not have occurred without pregnancy. To capture more completely all deaths occurring during or after pregnancy, the term "pregnancy-associated death," which includes "the death of any woman, from any cause, while she is pregnant—or within one year of termination of pregnancy," was developed.² Concurrently, enhanced maternal mortality surveillance techniques were being developed and tested, leading to previously underestimated maternal . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Injury Prevention Research Program, Office of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, New York City Department of Health, New York, NY. Ms Frye is now with the Center for Health and Gender Equity, Takoma Park, Md.

RELATED ARTICLE

Enhanced Surveillance for Pregnancy-Associated Mortality—Maryland, 1993-1998
Isabelle L. Horon and Diana Cheng
JAMA. 2001;285(11):1455-1459.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT