[Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Edinburgh City.

  • Edinburgh (Scotland). City Council.
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Edinburgh City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    73/274 (page 67)
    During the year, 162 mothers, of whom 128 were expectant and 34 nursing, were referred for dental care and 151 accepted treatment, and these women made a total of 683 attendances. In addition, 675 toddlers were referred for examination ; and of these 289 required treatment which necessitated 361 attendances. Puerperal Pyrexia and Puerperal Fever (Tables 8 to 13).—The number ■ of notifications of puerperal pyrexia during the year was 44, a reduction of 3 i compared with 1947. Of these notified cases 15 subsequently proved to be i cases of puerperal fever. The number of cases of puerperal fever notified was 39, a reduction of 13 compared with the previous year. Of these 39 cases, 6 were not confirmed as cases of puerperal fever, leaving 33 confirmed ones. These 33 confirmed cases, together with 15 cases notified as puerperal pyrexia but later proved to be puerperal fever, make a total of 48 cases of puerperal fever. One i death occurred among the cases of notified puerperal fever and one in a case not : notified either as puerperal fever or pyrexia. Maternal Deaths (Tables 14 to 20).—The steady and progressive decline i in the maternal death rate in Edinburgh was unfortunately not maintained in 1948. There were 15 deaths associated with pregnancy and childbirth, giving a rate of T7 per 1,000 total births compared with a rate of 1*2 in the previous 'year. Table 18 shows two sets of figures from 1944 to the present time. One set is calculated from the Registrar-General’s Classification based on death i certification, while the other is obtained from figures arrived at after clinical i investigation. Puerperal sepsis accounted for 2 cases, one associated with a spontaneous abortion which became septic. Deaths from toxaemias of pregnancy show a drop and those from haemorrhage remain about the same level. The miscellaneous (group of conditions causing maternal death was the main factor in raising the tnumber of deaths, accounting as it did for 10 out of the 15 deaths. In at least four of the maternal deaths the patients had not sought ante-natal care, and in another a previous long-standing malady, not detectable on ordinary examination, was not disclosed by the patient at her visits to the ante-natal clinic. Thus these cases imight be classed as preventable deaths. In all the remaining cases ante-natal icare was adequate and the fatal terminations could not be foreseen. (Child Health and Welfare (Tables 2, 21, 22, 23). Births.—There were 8,420 registered live births during the year after the (necessary corrections for transfers had been made. Of these, 4,279 were males sand 4,141 females. These registered births give a birth rate of 17-2, which shows a fall from 20-3 in 1947 and is merely a local index of the general nation-wide decrease in the birth rate. The rate for the city is lower than those of the other three large cities of Scotland and lower than the birth rate for Scotland as a whole. The number of notified births during the year was 10,648, compared with i 12,169 in 1947. Of these notified births, 2,467 occurred at home, giving a proportion of 23 per cent, compared with 8,181 or 77 per cent, occurring in institutions. These percentages compare with 31 per cent, and 69 per cent, respectively in 1947—an index of the modern trend towards institutional delivery.