Managing Maternal Mortality With Multifetal Pregnancy Reduction

For over 2 years, the world has reeled from the COVID-19 pandemic. Life has changed dramatically, priorities have been re-examined, and the collective approach to health care has shifted tremendously. While concerns regarding coronavirus and its variants are warranted, another "pandemic" is ravaging the world and has yet to be fully addressed: pregnancy-related maternal mortality.

The rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States is unconscionable. Compared with other developed nations — such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada — we lag far behind. Data published in 2020 showed that the rate of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the United States was 17.4, more than double that of France (8.7 deaths per 100,000 live births),¹ the country with the next-highest rate. Americans like being first — first to invent the light bulb, first to perform a successful solid organ xenotransplantation, first to go to the moon — but holding "first place" in maternal mortality is not something we should wish to maintain.

Ob.gyns have long raised the alarm regarding the exceedingly high rates of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States. While there have been many advances in antenatal care to reduce these severe adverse events — improvements in surveillance and data reporting, maternal-focused telemedicine services, multidisciplinary care team models, and numerous research initiatives by federal and nonprofit organizations