Comorbidity tool predicts severe maternal morbidity similarly across races, ethnicities

The Obstetric Comorbidity Index predicted severe maternal morbidity similarly in racial and ethnic subgroups, according to data presented at The Pregnancy Meeting.

“The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of the Obstetric Comorbidity Index (OB-CMI) — which is a validated tool that predicts severe maternal morbidity (SMM) in clinical settings — by race and ethnicity,” Adina R. Kern-Goldberger, MD, MPH, a maternal-fetal medicine fellow at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, said during the poster presentation.

Kern-Goldberger and colleagues retrospectively examined a cohort of 4,169 patients who delivered at a large, tertiary, academic medical center in 2019. They calculated an OB-CMI score for each patient and assessed its association with SMM as defined by the CDC.

The cohort was 64.3% non-Hispanic Black, 20.1% non-Hispanic white, 4.7% Hispanic and 7.6% Asian, with 270 patients (6.5%) experiencing SMM.

“There were significant differences in the prevalence of severe maternal morbidity by insurance status, gestational age at delivery, mode of delivery and OB-CMI score, but differences by race and ethnicity were not significant,” Kern-Goldberger said.

However, there were no significant differences between OB-CMI score and SMM when evaluating by race and ethnicity, she added.

“Given the significant and longstanding racial and ethnic disparities in maternal outcomes, it is important to ascertain whether predictive models or other strategies to reduce SMM operate equitably across patient sub-groups,” the researchers wrote in the abstract. “These data demonstrate that the OB-CMI prognosticates SMM similarly across racial and ethnic groups in this primarily [non-Hispanic Black] patient population.”