Planned home births in the United States and Canada are as safe as a hospital delivery for low-risk women, researchers said on Friday.
In a study of more than 5,000 home births with professional midwives in North America, scientists found that 87 percent of mothers and babies did not need to be transferred to a hospital.
“Our study of certified professional midwives suggests that they achieve a good outcome among low-risk women without routine use of expensive hospital interventions,” said Kenneth Johnson of the Public Health Agency of Canada in Ottawa.
The use of medical interventions such as forceps, epidurals and caesarean section were less than half of those in low-risk hospital births, according to the report in the British Medical Journal.
Less than 4 percent of the women in the study who had a home birth had a caesaraean section, forceps were used in 1 percent of the deliveries and 4.7 percent had epidural anaesthesia.
There were 1.7 deaths per 1,000 planned home births, which is similar to risks found in other studies of low-risk home and hospital births in North America, the researchers said.
“A high degree of safety and maternal satisfaction were reported,” they added.
