Excess Costs and Medical Services for Non-Breastfed Infants

Table 22-3   -- Excess Medical Cost Among 1,000 Never Breast-Fed Vs 1,000 Exclusive (>3 Months) Breast-Fed Infants

	EXCESS SERVICES PER YEAR/1,000 NEVER BREAST-FED	TOTAL EXCESS COST
Office visits	1,693	$111,315
Follow-up visits	340	$22,355
Medications[*]	609	$7,669
Chest radiography	51	$1,836
Days of hospitalization[†]	212	$187,866
Total excess cost per year		$331,031

Adapted from Ball TM, Wright AL: Health care costs of formula-feeding in the first year of life. Pediatrics 103:870, 1999.

*	Lower respiratory infection, otitis media.

†	Lower respiratory infection, gastroenteritis.

Crashing Jets and Birthing Babies

I started OB today, and since the day was mostly spent filling out and receiving paperwork about the rotation, I haven't done much in the way of actual medicine. However, I did come across this really interesting nugget of wisdom from the OB textbook, page 1:

Maternal mortality has been an under-recognized issue worldwide despite an estimated 600,000 maternal deaths per year from pregnancy-related causes. Put in numeric perspective, this is equivalent to six jumbo jet crashes per day with the deaths of all 250 passengers on board, all of them women in the reproductive years of life.