COVID-19 outcomes in hospitalized puerperal, pregnant, and neither pregnant nor puerperal women

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic in the Brazilian maternal mortality ratio: A comparative analysis of Neural Networks Autoregression, Holt-Winters exponential smoothing, and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average models

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The acute respiratory infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has resulted in increased mortality among pregnant, puerperal, and neonates. Brazil has the highest number of maternal deaths and a distressing fatality rate of 7.2%, more than double the country's current mortality rate of 2.8%. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian Maternal Mortality Ratio (BMMR) and forecasts the BMMR up to 2025.

METHODS

To assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the BMMR, we employed Holt-Winters, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), and Neural Networks Autoregression (NNA). We utilized a retrospective time series spanning twenty-five years (1996-2021) to forecast the BMMR under both a COVID-19 pandemic scenario and a controlled COVID-19 scenario.

RESULTS

Brazil consistently exhibited high maternal mortality values (mean BMMR [1996-2019] = 57.99 ±6.34/100,000 live births) according to World Health Organization criteria. The country experienced its highest mortality peak in the historical BMMR series in the second quarter of 2021 (197.75/100,000 live births), representing a more than 200% increase compared to the previous period. Holt-Winter and ARIMA models demonstrated better agreement with prediction results beyond the sample data, although NNA provided a better fit to previous data.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study revealed an increase in BMMR and its temporal correlation with COVID-19 incidence. Additionally, it showed that Holt-Winter and ARIMA models can be employed for BMMR forecasting with lower errors. This information can assist governments and public health agencies in making timely and informed decisions.

Treatment of pregnant and early postpartum women with severe and critical COVID-19: experience at a tertiary center

BACKGROUND

The management of acute respiratory failure during pregnancy is a poorly defined issue in the literature, especially regarding the use of the prone position and the appropriate time for delivery. This study describes our experience in treating pregnant and postpartum women with severe or critical coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This descriptive retrospective study included 25 pregnant and 4 postpartum women admitted to an ICU due to respiratory complications from COVID-19 from June 2020 to August 2021.

RESULTS

The mean maternal age was 33.6 years, and the median gestational age (GA) at admission was 33 weeks. Obesity was the most common comorbidity. The median time between symptom onset and ICU admission was 10 days, while the median length of ICU stay was 14 days. Invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) was required in 16 (55.2%) patients for a median time of 16.5 days. Prone positioning (PP) was performed in 68.7% of the patients on IMV, and resulted in an expressive increase in arterial oxygen partial pressure to fractional inspired oxygen (PaO2/FiO2 ratio). Eleven (44%) pregnant women delivered during their ICU stay for obstetric or fetal reasons: of these, 2 (18%) developed postpartum hemorrhagic shock and 1 (9%) developed abdominal wall infection. None of the 25 pregnant women underwent delivery due to acute respiratory failure or in an attempt to avoid intubation. There were 2 fetal deaths, but no maternal or neonatal deaths.

CONCLUSION

We observed favorable outcomes in pregnant and postpartum women with severe and critical COVID-19 admitted to our institution. This finding reinforces the effectiveness of PP in the treatment of hypoxemic respiratory failure secondary to COVID-19 in pregnant women undergoing IMV, and suggests that gestation should only be interrupted in cases of obstetric and fetal complications, provided the patient is stable, or when hypoxemia is refractory to PP.