Medical and psychological support of women with stillbirth in the perinatal period: a national study

In the Russian Federation, the stillbirth rate in 2018 was 5.51 per 1000 live and dead births, which is almost twice the figure in the United States and Europe. This study aimed to conduct a rating analysis separately for each factor that influences the selection of techniques for the management of labor and the postpartum period in women with stillbirth.

Material and methods. A questionnaire was developed, which consisted 23 questions in Russian. A total of 402 Russian-speaking medical workers took part in the survey.

Results. In this study, 49.7% of the respondents seldom encounter patients with stillbirth. Moreover, 59.5% of the respondents find it easy to create a supportive communication with these patients, 70% believed that contact between the mother and her stillborn child has a negative influence on her psychoemotional state both at the time of delivery and in the long term, and only 27.7% found that mothers wanted to spend time with the child. As the optimal method of analgesia, 57.2% of the respondents chose epidural analgesia for stillbirth delivery. Furthermore, 57.7% believed that patients with stillbirth were satisfied with the quality of medical care, and 74.1% gave a positive assessment of the quality of medical care provided to patients with stillbirth in their medical institutions. Moreover, medical professionals (89.3%) consider it necessary to develop clinical recommendations on this problem.

Conclusions. The results indicate that a unified technique of managing the peripartum period with stillbirth is still not established. Clinical guidelines on this problem are necessary.