Maternal Recall and Medical Records: An Examination of Events During Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Early Infancy

Abstract

It is not currently known whether sufficiently precise data on a previous pregnancy, labor and delivery, and early infancy can be obtained retrospectively. We conducted a telephone survey in 1991 of women who delivered babies between 1984 and 1986 at two teaching hospitals in Nashville, Tennessee, to assess how well mothers recall information on factors predictive of an adverse birth outcome. The survey yielded 102 usable responses that were compared with hospital records for mothers and infants. Overall, 89 percent agreement was found between women's responses and their charts. Respondents were not reluctant to answer potentially sensitive questions, and their technical knowledge was typically better for their own health than about some prenatal diagnostic procedures and their infants' health. We found no difference in recall accuracy according to whether mothers experienced some adversity with the index pregnancy. Accurate perinatal information can generally be obtained with a recall period as high as four to six years.

Concordance of chart abstraction and patient recall of intrapartum variables up to 53 years later

“…(8). Three studies analyzing concordance up to 10 years after delivery generally found poor to fair agreement between medical records and maternal recall of type of delivery, anesthesia used and major complications (9)(10)(11). The two studies that provided a quantitative estimate of concordance of recall more than 10 years after delivery both found high concordance rates for recall of birth weight and delivery by cesarean section, which is consistent with our findings.…”

“…The data previously published on the concordance of maternal recall of obstetrical variables is limited but can be divided into studies performed immediately postpartum (7,8) less than 10 years from delivery (9,11), and greater than ten years (1). A study performed three weeks postpartum revealed moderate to excellent agreement on a number of obstetrical issues including type of delivery, use of episiotomy and use of regional anesthesia.…”

Comparison of Feeding Among Multiple Birth Infants

“…We surveyed mothers when their infants were between two and three years of age. Even though US national breastfeeding rates currently are being reported based on recall of caregivers of 19-to 34-month-old chil- dren (Li et al, 2003) and there have been several studies that cited maternal recall of infant feeding events as accurate years later, (Githens et al, 1993;Launer et al, 1992;Wereszczak et al, 1997;Yawn et al, 1998) this previous and ongoing work includes only mothers of singletons. We did ask the mothers of multiples in our study an identical set of questions for each of their infants.…”

Breast-feeding rates and related maternal and infants’ obstetric factors in Japanese twins

“…These methodological faults cannot be adjusted for, and represent the largest limitation of the present questionnaire survey. Nevertheless, there have been many studies that have cited maternal recall of perinatal and infant feeding events as being accurate years later [62][63][64][65].…”