Perinatal factors reported by mothers: do they agree with medical records?

Abstract

As perinatal events have been linked with diseases of later onset, epidemiological studies on child development and adult health require information on the perinatal period. When national neonatal registers do not exist, review of medical records may be impractical. However, neonatal information could be obtained by asking mothers to complete a postal questionnaire using data from the Personal Child Health Record (PCHR). We assessed agreement between medical records and mothers' reports for information on delivery and the newborn's condition at birth, based on the PCHR, a short time after delivery. Of 711 women giving birth in 3 French hospitals and invited to participate in the study, 580 (82%) completed a postal questionnaire 6 weeks after delivery, copying the data recorded in the PCHR when available. Information on pregnancy, delivery and the newborn's health at birth was independently extracted from medical records by physicians of the maternity departments. Agreement between medical records and maternal reports for a range of perinatal factors was assessed in 580 newborn-mother dyads using kappa coefficients. Agreement was excellent for first and second stages of delivery, gestational age, birth weight, birth size and head circumference (kappa coefficients 0.80-1.00) and good for hospitalization during pregnancy, but poor for Apgar scores. With this exception, mothers' reports appeared reliable when compared with medical records. As PCHRs exist in most developed countries, this approach could be used in epidemiological studies on child development to increase the reliability of mothers' reports of their newborn's condition at birth.

Agreement between Self-Reports and Medical Records in the Reporting of Pregnancy Outcomes in Women with Type 1 Diabetes

“…Similar to what we observed for neonatal weight-related outcomes as previously reported in the literature, maternal recall of neonatal birth weight was highly accurate [21]. The high to perfect level of agreement between the SR and MR data for several of the pregnancy outcomes in these participants with T1D is similar to previous studies showing excellent agreement for mode of delivery [22,23]. These findings suggest that self-report of some pregnancy outcomes, such as type of delivery and neonatal weight, can be accurate.…”

“…may be distorted due to recall and may not be consistent with a hospital's recording of length stay [19]. For mothers the total length of hospital stay may include periods of predelivery, delivery and post-delivery [22], and mothers may not be able to specifically recall time during the post-delivery period. Regarding neonatal complications, our finding of poor agreement were consistent with previous results [22].…”

“…For mothers the total length of hospital stay may include periods of predelivery, delivery and post-delivery [22], and mothers may not be able to specifically recall time during the post-delivery period. Regarding neonatal complications, our finding of poor agreement were consistent with previous results [22]. In our study, mother's self-report on neonatal complications was more general, and agreement might have been better had we targeted specific complications (e.g., jaundice, hypoglycemia).…”

Repeatability of maternal report on prenatal, perinatal and early postnatal factors: findings from the IDEFICS parental questionnaire

“…16 The good repeatability of those variables can be explained by the fact that in various countries this information was documented for example, in maternity passes, birth certificates or in other medical records of the child. 17,18 This finding is supported by other studies showing that maternal recall of perinatal factors, for example, birth weight or gestational age provides accurate information for epidemiological studies.…”

Descriptive study evaluating the use of the Road to Health card by doctors in a tertiary Paediatric hospital setting

“…[6] Numerous international and local studies have highlighted three weak links in the use of the PCHR by health professionals: failure to request the record from the caregiver, failure to use the record as a reference source of the child's medical background, and failure to comprehensively and accurately record new information in the record. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Much of the research on the weak links has relied on participant recall, which in many cases has not matched the health professional's medical notes. Few studies have examined both the PCHR and institutional clinical records to determine what information has been transferred in either direction.…”