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Spontaneous births per 100,000 women of reproductive age, 1980–2004.

There was a small (2.3%) decline in maternal age adjusted spontaneous preterm birth rate on a background of a greater decline (17.1%) in maternal age adjusted spontaneous birth at term

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There were 1.49 million births in Scotland over the study period, of which 5.8% were preterm. We found a percentage increase in crude rates of both spontaneous preterm birth per 1,000 singleton births (10.7%, p<0.01) and medically indicated preterm births (41.2%, p<0.01), which persisted when adjusted for maternal age at delivery.

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http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000153

Norman JE, Morris C, Chalmers J (2009) The Effect of Changing Patterns of Obstetric Care in Scotland (1980–2004) on Rates of Preterm Birth and Its Neonatal Consequences: Perinatal Database Study. PLoS Med 6(9): e1000153. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000153

© 2009 Norman et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.