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  • 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021
  • Project No: 481
  • Funding round: FR19

Approximately one in five pregnancies miscarry, and the loss of an unborn baby can potentially cause psychological distress, physical harm and impact on future reproductive choices. Although researchers have gathered evidence about the clinical impacts of miscarriage, relatively little is known about its economic impact. This study aims to generate evidence about the economic consequences of miscarriage and the value for money of approaches aimed at preventing or treating miscarriage.

We will first use a technique called a ‘systematic review’ to identify and summarise all the available existing evidence about the economic costs of miscarriage. The systematic review will also identify and summarise all the available existing evidence about the value for money of different methods for preventing or treating miscarriage.

We will then conduct a study that will aim to estimate the economic costs associated with miscarriage. We will use data from a primary care database called QResearch, which covers 1500 general practices across the UK and contains data going back several years. The database is also linked to the hospital records of patients. We will identify a group of women who experienced a miscarriage and compare their use and cost of primary (general practice) and secondary (hospital) health care services with a group of women who didn’t experience a miscarriage. Our study will estimate the costs of hospital outpatient attendances and procedures, hospital admissions, consultations with general practitioners, prescriptions, medical tests and investigations. We will estimate the short-term and long-term costs associated with miscarriage. We will also distinguish between the economic costs associated with different types of miscarriage, for example, sporadic miscarriage or recurrent miscarriage (where a woman has had a previous miscarriage).

We will work with Tommy’s, the baby charity, on this research. The results of this research will be presented to relevant stakeholders and published in academic journals.

Co-applicants

Shahd Daher, Julia Hippisley-Cox, Catia Nicodemo (Oxford)

 

Amount awarded: £ 22 924.78

Projects by themes

We have grouped projects under the five SPCR themes in this document

Evidence synthesis working group

The collaboration will be conducting 18 high impact systematic reviews, under four workstreams.