The Effect of Unplanned Home Birth on Maternal and Neonatal Outcomes: Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: It is known that unplanned home births have an impact on maternal and neonatal outcomes. Objective: This review was made to review the effect of unplanned home births on material and fetal results with current studies and to reveal the positive and negative aspects of unplanned home births. Methods: The study, which is a systematic review, was conducted between 28 August-27 September 2020 through scanning Turkish and English indexes. Turk Medline, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, PubMed, Cochrane and National Thesis Center databases were searched with keywords; ‘home birth, non-hospital, non-hospital birth, home birth-non-hospital birth and neonatal outcomes, home birth-non-hospital birth and maternal outcomes’ are key searched by words. Results: In this systematic review, it was determined that unplanned home births adversely affect maternal and neonatal outcomes. It was found women’s age, number of pregnancies, gestational week, marital status and socioeconomic characteristics had an effect on the probability of births outside the hospital, and more adverse maternal outcomes has been reported. It has been determined that newborns born as a result of unplanned home births have low birth weights, a high risk of being premature, a longer hospital stay, higher rates of clinical complications, and higher neonatal morbidity and mortality rates. It has been determined that women who have unplanned home births receive inadequate antenatal care. Conclusion: As a result of this review, it was found that maternal characteristics of women affect the probability of giving birth outside the hospital, unplanned home births increase the risk of adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes and are associated with inadequate antenatal care.