Abstract
Purpose
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after childbirth causes severe and lasting effects. Screening of childbirth experience may expedite early PTSD recognition. Systematic reviews have not provided consensus on how and when to measure childbirth experience and the clinical implications of such measurements. We aimed to identify a reliable and simple scale for screening the childbirth experience with minimum risk of missing PTSD.
Materials and methods
This cohort study evaluated the childbirth experience of 1527 unselected women with Wijma Delivery Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ-B), Delivery Satisfaction Scale (DSS), and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). VAS was measured first <1 week (VAS1) and then, together with the other scales, a few months after childbirth (VAS2). The scales’ ability to identify PTSD (measured with Traumatic Event Scale) was evaluated and compared with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Diagnostic accuracy and clinical usefulness were used to suggest cutoff values for scales.
Results
W-DEQ-B showed highest recognition of partial or full PTSD (area under the ROC curve 0.96 in W-DEQ-B, 0.92 in VAS2, 0.91 in DSS and 0.82 in VAS1).
Conclusions
All included scales recognized partial or full PTSD well. Although W-DEQ-B performed best, VAS (measured twice) with cutoff value of 50 mm is most suitable for screening in clinical circumstances.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for comments from Jenny Miettinen, Lauri Hietajärvi, and Katja Upadyaya.
Disclosure statement
The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Data availability statement
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to limitations of ethical approval involving the patient data and anonymity but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.