Introduction: To elucidate possible mechanisms behind the increased risk of stillbirth and infant mortality among migrants in Denmark, this study aimed to analyse characteristics of perinatal deaths at Hvidovre Hospital 2006-2010 - -according to maternal country of origin.
Methods: We identified children born at Hvidovre Hospital who died perinatally and included the patient files in a series of case studies. Our data were linked to data from population-covering registries in Statistics Denmark. Timing, causes of death as well as social, medical and obstetric characteristics of the parents were described according to maternal country of origin.
Results: This study included 125 perinatal deaths. The data indicated that intrapartum death, death caused by maternal disease, lethal malformation and preterm birth may be more frequent among non-Western than among Danish-born women. Obesity and disposition to diabetes may also be more prevalent among the non-Western women.
Conclusions: The role of obesity, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia and severe congenital anomalies should be a main focus in improving our understanding the increased risk of perinatal death among non-Western migrant women in Denmark. Six of 28 perinatal deaths in the non-Western group were intrapartum deaths and warrants further concern.
Funding: This project was funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research as part of the SULIM project.
Trial registration: The linkage of data from patient files to data from Statistics Denmark was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency. Only anonymised data were used.