Reporting of Fetal Deaths in New York City

Spontaneous fetal death in man

“…Although the results indicate that up to 14% of the pregnancies end in fetal death, three elements indicate some caution in their interpretation. First, Erhardt (1969;unpublished memo) argues that fetal death reporting in New York City has fallen off in recent years. This appears to be confirmed (assuming no decline in the actual propensity for fetal death from 1963 to 1967) in that the 1963 estimates are almost double those for 1967.…”

“…It is recognized that reporting of spontaneous fetal death is far from complete (Erhardt, 1952) and that induced abortions may, at times, be included posing as spontaneous terminations. This issue will be discussed in greater detail later.…”

“…Pregnancies ascertained at different gestation ages (a cross-section) where each pregnancy is again followed until termination, form the basis of a fusion life table, the most commonly used model in the study of fetal death (Erhardt, 1962(Erhardt, , 1963French and Bierman, 1962;Taylor, 1964Taylor, , 1970Pettersson, 1968;Awan, 1969;Shapiro et al, 1970). The designation "fusion" is applied since this model combines the cohorts from month two, month three, and so on.…”

“…Subsequent life table studies began to incorporate pregnancies observed during the first trimester, the result of improved diagnostic procedures. Some studies ascertained pregnancies through health insurance plans (Shapiro, Jones, and Densen, 1962;Shapiro and Abramowicz, 1969;Shapiro, Levine, and Abramowicz, 1970;Taylor, 1964Taylor, , 1970; some used clinically diagnosed pregnancies (Mellin, 1962;Pettersson, 1968;Awan, 1969); and others incorporated a variety of detection procedures (French and Bierman, 1962;Erhardt, 1962Erhardt, , 1963.…”

A Study of Temporal Variations in the Risk of Fetal Malformation and Death

“…When the trend of recorded fetal mortality was reviewed a few years ago by Erhardt (1952), deaths after the 28th week of gestation appeared to be declining and those between the 13th and 28th weeks to be fairly stable, but the number of deaths reported at less than 13 weeks gestation was still rising rapidly. Since then the ratio between reported fetal deaths and live births has continued to rise but at a diminishing rate.…”