Ricerc@Sapienza

Background:
Obstetric complications, including those that narrowly avoid
death, the Maternal Near Miss (MNM), are an issue of concern
for immigrant women. The objective of this study was to
describe immigrant women’s access for these complications to
emergency rooms (ERs) in Rome, Italy.
Methods:
Data on access to ERs in five large hospitals from 1999 to 2014
were collected. Foreign patients were divided into 23 foreign
patient groups (FPGs). A Poisson regression model was used to
estimate the incidence rate ratios (IRRs) of the various groups
for: complications of pregnancy (CP, ICD9-CM 11); circumstances related to reproduction (CRR, ICD9-CM V20-29);
MNM (for this model we collapsed non-EU citizens together
due to the low incidence of this condition).
Results:
7.4% of the 2,668,537 women’s accesses to ERs led to a
diagnosis of CP, and 4.1% of CRR.
The FPGs with higher percentage of diagnoses were: Southern
Asia (22.8%), Eastern Asia (19.9%) and South-Eastern Asia
(16.6%) for CP; Southern Asia (12.9%), Middle Africa (8.9%)
and Romania (8%) for CRR. Almost all FPGs had a higher risk
than Italians of having a CP or CRR diagnosis, with the
exception of Southern Africa, Northern America, Australia and
New Zealand and stateless. Globally, non-EU citizens showed a
higher risk of having an MNM than Italians (IRR:2.20; 95% CI:
1.50-3.24).
Conclusion:
The higher risk of all the FPGs - excluding those probably
composed mostly by tourists - of a CP, CRR or MNM
66 European Journal of Public Health,Vol. 28, Supplement 1, 2018
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article-abstract/28/suppl_1/cky096/4994353
by Sapienza Università di Roma user
on 11 July 2018
diagnosis underlines the need of interventions aimed at
improving the access of immigrant women to prenatal care
services.
Main messages:
The increased risk of a CP or CRR diagnosis concerning almost
all the FPGs, suggests a deficiency in the delivery of prenatal
care services to immigrant women.
The access of immigrant women to prenatal care services
should be improved by tailored health policy interventions