Korean J Perinatol.  2010 Jun;21(2):129-139.

Bench-marking of Japanese Perinatal Center System for Improving Maternal and Neonatal Outcome in Korea

• Bae CW

Abstract

Perinatal care implicates the entire course associated with pregnancy, which consists of care for pregnant woman and fetus during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and care for neonate also. All the course lies on the same line of continuity, not on the separated individuals. Therefore perinatal care requires integrated approach to both perinatal women and neonates. This is of great importance as a concept of perinatal medicine. However, the obstetric and neonatal fields are operated independently in Korea so that they lack of connectivity and continuity. Operation of integrated center is inevitable in order to improve perinatal outcome by reducing perinatal and neonatal mortality rate. In Japan, they started nationwide perinatal medicine center in 1979, they have 77 tertiary and 242 secondary perinatal centers in all provinces in 2009. As a result they have the lowest perinatal and neonatal mortality rate in the world. In Korea, recently it has decreased markedly over past 30 years, but not reached to that of Japan. The reason is that we have not established integrated perinatal medicine center yet. Therefore the author suggests a benchmarking experience of Japan, the integrated perinatal care center, in order to further improve perinatal and neonatal mortality in Korea.

Keyword

Perinatal mortality; Neonatal mortality; Infant mortality; Perinatal intensive care center; Neonatal intensive care unit; Newborn; Delivery

MeSH Terms

Asian Continental Ancestry Group
Benchmarking
Female
Fetus
Humans
Infant
Infant Mortality
Infant, Newborn
Japan
Korea
Perinatal Care
Perinatal Mortality
Pregnancy
Pregnant Women