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Good Science and Good Judgment

Paula Braveman, MD, MPH; Woodie Kessel, MD, MPH; Susan Egerter, PhD; Julius Richmond, MD

JAMA. 1997;278(4):334-336.

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

Two articles in this issue of THE JOURNAL reach apparently conflicting conclusions regarding the safety of the short postpartum hospital stays that are now—and are likely to remain—standard for apparently well mothers and newborns. Both studies, 1 from Washington State¹ and 1 from Wisconsin,2used case-control designs and large secondary databases to examine the association between early discharge and neonatal readmissions. Although this question has been explored before, few studies have been so large or have addressed limitations so skillfully. Interpreting the implications of these studies and their seemingly contradictory conclusions raises difficult issues about science and society; the issues are not unique to these studies.

Using linked birth certificate and hospital discharge abstracts from eligible vaginal singleton live births in Washington State from 1991 through 1994, Liu and colleagues² investigated whether "early" (<30 hours after delivery) compared with "later" (30-78 hours after delivery) discharge increased the risk . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Departments of Family and Community Medicine (Drs Egerter and Braveman) and Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Dr Braveman), University of California, San Francisco; the Division of Science, Education, and Analysis, Maternal Child and Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC (Dr Kessel); and the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass (Dr Richmond).

Footnotes
Reprints: Paula Braveman, MD, MPH, University of California at San Francisco, 500 Parnassus Ave, Box 0900, MU-3E, Rm 306, San Francisco, CA 94143-0900.

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