A U.S. study shows that pregnant women who require hospitalization for COVID-19 seem to have lower mortality rates than non-pregnant women, even when intensive care is necessary.
Researchers examined data on 1,062 pregnant women and 9,815 non-pregnant women who were hospitalized with COVID-19 and viral pneumonia from April to November 2020. The data revealed that in-hospital deaths were less amongst the pregnant patients (0.8%) than the patients who were not pregnant (3.5%).
Researchers for the study, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that even when patients required intensive care, in-hospital deaths took place less frequently amongst pregnant patients (3.5%) than patients who were not pregnant (14.9%).
One senior author of the study, Dr. Anthony Harris of the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore, explained that most other studies show that pregnant women are actually at an increased risk of mortality. These studies include ones done by the CDC.
Dr. Harris noted that the other studies suffered from a reporting bias, which resulted in a higher proportion of pregnant women who did not do well being reported to the voluntary reporting system. In contrast, pregnant women who did well in hospital were not reported.
The researchers of this study performed a retrospective analysis of data on women with COVID-19-related viral pneumonia, between the ages 15 and 45 years, whose information was available in the Premier Healthcare Database. The discharge records from 853 hospitals and from all payers contained here make up 20% of all US hospitalisations.
