Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC)

Different definitions of maternal mortality are used to track and analyze deaths by different organizations. Most broadly, maternal mortality is the death of a person while pregnant or within one year of the end of a pregnancy.

A pregnancy-associated death is the death of a person within one year of the end of a pregnancy from any cause. Pregnancy-associated deaths represent the broadest category of maternal deaths, and can be broken down further into two main categories: pregnancy-related deaths and deaths unrelated to pregnancy.

A pregnancy-related death is a maternal death due to a pregnancy complication. More specifically, these deaths occur during pregnancy or within a year of the end of a pregnancy and are due to a chain of events initiated by the pregnancy or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy.

During 2014-2018, a total of 49 Nebraskan women died within one year of pregnancy. The mean annual number of deaths was approximately 10. The lowest number of deaths occurred during 2017, with 6 deaths; the highest number of deaths occurred during 2014, with 12 deaths. During the same five-year period, there were 131,394 live births to Nebraska residents. Therefore, the pregnancy-associated mortality ratio (PAMR) for Nebraska residents from 2014-2018 was 37.29 deaths per 100,000 live births.