Are home births as safe as hospital births?

Washington: For all those moms-to-be wishing and wondering if giving birth at home is safe or not, researchers have found that low-risk pregnant women carry no increased chances of perinatal or neonatal death of their baby as compared to women delivering in hospitals.

The results have been published by The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine journal.

"More women in well-resourced countries are choosing birth at home, but concerns have persisted about their safety," said Eileen Hutton, study's first author and professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster, founding director of the McMaster Midwifery Research Centre.

"This research clearly demonstrates the risk is no different when the birth is intended to be at home or in hospital," said Hutton.

The study examined the safety of the place of birth by reporting on the risk of death at the time of birth or within the first four weeks, and they found no important or statistically different clinical risk between home and hospital groups.

Researchers used data from 21 studies published since 1990 comparing the home and hospital birth outcomes in Sweden, New Zealand, England, Netherlands, Japan, Australia, Canada and the U.S.

Outcomes from approximately 500,000 intended home births were compared to similar numbers of births intended to occur in hospital in the same eight countries.

"Our research provides much-needed information to policymakers, care providers and women and their families when planning for birth," Hutton opined.