Conclusions:
In a unique setting—a live three-day meeting attended by
highly-engaged, knowledgeable professionals and prinPI’s in stillbirth
research, with extensive consensus procedure experience—six markers
for identification of near-misses in stillbirth studies were agreed
upon. The importance of establishing a standardized list of surrogate
markers for use by all research groups was recognized. Some limitations
should be acknowledged: most participants were from high-income
countries. Also, adverse events related to interventions leading to
unnecessary preterm birth are not captured in this procedure. When risk
prediction for stillbirth is accurate and is paired with effective
interventions, stillbirth will be prevented. From the perspective of a
screening study, a successful prediction-prevention coupling changes a
true-positive to a false-positive, and could result in rejecting
successful approaches.(5) We believe the current near-miss stillbirth
outcome set is a step closer to appropriate recognition of those
pregnancies in which a stillbirth was a near-miss.