Royal Shrewsbury Hospital NHS TRUST
Royal Shrewsbury Hosptal, Mytton Oak Road, Shewsbury, Shropshire, SY3 8XF

2 December 2003

Dear Ms Shaw

Thank you for your request for statistical information regarding the number of births/caesarean sections, maternal and neonatal deaths and hysterectomies. I understand you want at least twelve years of these statistics, and while I applaud your desire to establish a self-help and support group of women requiring hysterectomy after delivery, I do not understand why you need all thisinformation to establish such a group.

I can however provide the following information if you feel it will be of help.

_Deliveries_in_Shropshire_ (you need to know that we have one Consultnat Unit and five low risk peripheral units in the country).

Approximately 2% of these deliveries are home births.

There have been three hysterectomies performed since 1997 when we began to keep these statistics, but I cannot tell if they wre follwng normal or caesarean births or if they were associated with a maternal death.

(page two)

_Maternal_Deaths_

A maternal death is classified as a death occurring within one year of childbirth or abortion from direct or indirect causes, or indeed accidental heath. The statistics reflect this total numer and do not specify which deaths occured on the unit as the result of a labour-based problem.

Between January 1990 and Deciemer 2002 there were 11 maternal deaths.

I am not sure what you mean by 'baby deaths'. There is the _perinatal_mortality_rate_ which is the number of babies still boen after 24th week of gestation and those who die in the first week of life; or the _early_neonatal_death_rate_ which is the number of babies born alive but dying whith the first 7 deays of life; or the _infant_death_rate_ which is the number of babies born live but dying with the first year of life from all causes.

In a unit liek this one, we would loose approximately 50 babies a year as perinatal deaths. The cause of the deaths varies enormously from fetal abnormality to birth injury, or lack of oxygen during labour and so on. It would be very difficult to provide a dtailed breaddown of every perinatal loss from 1990 to date.

I hope this information is of some help to you. If you have any contact cards or leaflets, we would (be) so pleased to pass tem on to any patient needing a hysterectomy following delivery.

Yours sincerely,

(signed)

Miss S. Breslin
Head of Woman's Services