Postdelivery mortality in Tennessee, 1989-1991.

Objective: To describe postdelivery mortality rates among residents of Tennessee from 1989 through 1991 and to compare these rates with those of women who had not delivered a live or stillborn infant in the previous year.

Methods: Postdelivery deaths (those occurring within a year of delivery of a live or stillborn infant) were identified using a computerized linkage of birth and fetal death certificates to death certificates of female decedents aged 15-44 years. Each identified postdelivery death was reviewed and categorized as either pregnancy-related (temporally and causally related to pregnancy) or pregnancy-associated-but-not-related (temporally but not causally related to pregnancy).

Monitoring maternal mortality using vital records linkage.

We developed a method to identify maternal deaths (deaths to women within 365 days of delivery) by linking Tennessee vital records. A computerized algorithm compared personal identifiers from the death certificates of reproductive-aged women to maternal identifiers on birth and fetal death certificates. For each decedent record which met the study criteria, the algorithm calculated a "match score" by comparing common elements in both files.