Frequent emergency care during pregnancy could signal greater risk for severe maternal morbidity

A new study found that, among nearly 775,000 pregnant people in Massachusetts, 31 percent of these individuals had at least one unscheduled emergency visit to the hospital, and 3.3 percent had four or more unscheduled hospital visits. The latter group was nearly 50 percent more likely to experience severe maternal morbidity (SMM), which encompasses a range of complications during labor or childbirth that can lead to poor maternal outcomes such as aneurysms, eclampsia, kidney and heart failure, and sepsis.