Pregnancy-Related Deaths Due to Infection

Infection has been a leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System since 1987, when reporting began. For this descriptive study, we used 2012-2019 data from the Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. Specific subclassifications of infection deaths were analyzed by sociodemographic characteristics, and pregnancy-related mortality ratios (pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births) were calculated for each infection subclassification. The overall pregnancy-related mortality ratio for infection was 2.23. Sepsis was the most frequent subclassification (46.4%) of pregnancy-related infection deaths, followed by other nonpelvic infections (25.2%). Endocarditis deaths had the largest relative increase in pregnancy-related mortality ratio among pregnancy-related infection deaths between 2012 (0.10) and 2019 (0.56). Reporting subclassifications of pregnancy-related infection deaths could improve the ability to focus interventions for reducing pregnancy-related deaths and assessing progress over time.