FRIDAY, April 22 (HealthDay News) -- Ectopic pregnancy rates in the United States increased over a recent 15-year period, according to a population-based study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Britton Trabert, Ph.D., from the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues calculated ectopic pregnancy rates from 1993 to 2007 among Group Health Cooperative enrollees aged 15 to 44. Their objective was to estimate long-term population-based ectopic pregnancy rates and trends during a defined population over a time period that was mostly unevaluated.
The researchers identified 2,114 ectopic pregnancy cases (726 inpatient, 1,388 outpatient) during that time, which represented an annual age-adjusted ectopic pregnancy rate of 17.9 per 10,000 woman-years. Rates were stable through 2004 and increased in the three most recent years of the period. The rate per 1,000 pregnancies increased from 19.2 to 26.2 during the 15-year period. Inpatient-diagnosed cases and cases with surgical treatment declined from 45.4 to 26.9 percent and from 48.1 to 30.7 percent, respectively.
"The results suggest a trend toward increasing ectopic pregnancy rates over a recent 15-year period. Rates are similar to the last available national estimate, suggesting that the significance of ectopic pregnancy as a public health problem has not diminished in these intervening years," the authors write.
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